Frontline workers have too often been categorized as a single entity, referred to as “all our non-office-based employees,” to their great detriment. By definition, a one-size-fits-all talent, training or support strategy will not serve every segment as it deserves. It’s much better to tailor talent and technology strategies to the distinct needs of different types of frontline work.
Since the Industrial Revolution and capital investments mostly began being allocated to machines, strategic attention has largely gone to desk workers designing work around machines and technology, with less care given to the boots on the ground. So, with HR leaders often designing talent strategies around office-based roles, already-stretched line supervisors are left to manage frontline teams. When HR does focus on the frontline, they often apply a broad-strokes approach to managing a workforce that is anything but homogeneous.
In the U.S. alone, frontline roles account for almost 73% of total employment—over 100 million workers, in nearly 166 million jobs. But some studies report that as many as 75% of this vital cohort feel overstretched and burned out.
It’s clear their needs aren’t being met, and that’s partly because HR hasn’t defined them. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies approximately 800 occupations, and the frontline workforce spans nearly 600 of them; so HR has essentially coasted on a lot of generalized employment practices that haven’t fully optimized this massive, critical workforce.
New Josh Bersin Company research highlights the issue of this huge blind spot in HR thinking to the detriment of pay, hiring, training, resourcing, AI implementation and beyond.
Instead, CHROs must start the core operational change of moving from overseeing a single “frontline workforce” to a new taxonomy: managing five distinct labor systems, each with its own strategy, technology needs and definition of career satisfaction. Our research clearly shows that employers that invest in this now will see reduced turnover, stronger performance and a more resilient frontline workforce.
See also: Frontline burnout, turnover and the technology gap HR must address
A new HR taxonomy for frontline workers
In collaboration with Paradox and based on a number of research pipelines, including an AI-enhanced deep dive into the nearly 600 frontline occupations identified in the O*NET database, we have defined a five-tier categorization model of this deskless, diverse and increasingly important, multi-million-strong frontline workforce, with different ways of supporting them in terms of talent and technology strategies.
Customer-facing associate: relatively low-skilled, front-of-house, entry-level, mostly customer-facing employees. Examples: retail associates, fast-food crew, call-center agents, restaurant servers, hotel attendants.
Support them by streamlining hiring and onboarding for speed with AI-driven screening, digital paperwork and fast first-day engagement. Free managers from admin burden through automation, redirecting their time to coaching and reducing early attrition. Prioritize scheduling flexibility, self-service shift swapping, cross-location shift-sharing and demand-based scheduling, letting workers boost earnings and balance life commitments.
Enable real-time, in-flow learning and updates via mobile devices, delivering product/pricing changes and microlearning directly at the point of work, so associates stay current without leaving the floor.
Back-office associate: low-skilled, back-of-house, entry-level, mostly non-customer-facing workers. Examples: warehouse pickers, kitchen prep staff, laundry attendants, stockroom clerks.
The focus here should be manager-driven daily recognition, like team huddles celebrating wins, to counter the common isolation and “only hear when something’s wrong” pattern. Make safety visible and consistent: mobile safety briefings, real-time alerts and embedded compliance tools, signaling genuine care for physically demanding, high-risk work.
Compete on total employment value beyond wages: healthcare, career pathways and schedule predictability. Enable multilingual conversational AI for accessible hiring across diverse workforces, and offer on-demand pay access to ease financial stress between paychecks, boosting wellbeing and retention.
High-skilled specialist: experienced, non-licensed operational/technical role employees. Examples: retail managers, pastry chefs, wind turbine technicians.
Here, think about investing in leadership development for those promoted into supervisory roles. This might be structured coaching, succession planning and follow-up support to reduce turnover. Build visible, structured career pathways with funded upskilling, boosting internal mobility and retention.
Reward multiskilling with pay incentives, expanding flexibility and reducing reliance on scarce specialists. Enable continuous, scenario-based mobile learning for skill progression, use workforce intelligence platforms to forecast needs and redeploy talent quickly and integrate scheduling, routing, and safety tools into one mobile system to simplify demanding fieldwork.
Licensed specialist: skilled roles requiring formal licensure. Examples: vocational nurses, CDL truck drivers, HVAC technicians, hair stylists.
Support this group by building multi-year talent pipelines through earn-and-learn apprenticeships, since licensing/certification can’t be acquired quickly. Prioritize predictable scheduling to manage fatigue in safety-critical work, using AI scheduling tools for visibility and flexibility.
Differentiate compensation beyond pay, with housing, per diems and incentives for roles with extreme demands or remote conditions. Enable real-time certification tracking linked to scheduling, use CRM platforms for long-cycle candidate relationships, and integrate safety/performance data to proactively identify risks and target retraining before incidents occur.
Credentialed professional: advanced knowledge workers with ongoing certification. Examples: doctors, pharmacists, pilots, attorneys.
Support credentialed professionals by redesigning work for top-of-license practice, offloading administrative tasks via automation or support staff to combat burnout. Plan workforce needs on a five-to-10 year horizon, building funded internal pathways into specialized roles to boost retention and diversity.
Compete on professional identity, positioning these workers as guardians of quality and investing visibly in cutting-edge tools and training. Enable structured, integrated continuing education with real-time credential tracking, advanced scheduling that enforces scope-of-practice rules, and unified digital tools for documentation, collaboration and high-value practice.
Using the taxonomy to optimize your organization
Frontline-heavy organizations face a familiar set of pressures: chronic role vacancies, intense competition for talent from the same shallow pools, high turnover and nonnegotiable safety and compliance obligations. The organizations that consistently outperform on the frontline are not those that spend the most, but those that invest with precision, directing resources in proportion to the skill, value and risk profile of each role.
The imperative is clear. Map your organization’s frontline roles to the five segments. Prioritize the segments that carry the greatest risk for the organization and sector. Then, build the talent and technology strategies each actually requires. One size does not fit the frontline.
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