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[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you're in the right place.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Celisa Steele.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jeff Cobb, and this is the leading learning pod.
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[SPEAKER_02]: help center agents, nurses.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The people fixing your car and ringing you up at the grocery store, they're all part of the frontline workforce, which makes up roughly 80% of the global workforce.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, when we talk about learning, we're usually picturing someone with a desk and the ability to decide to carve out dedicated time for focused learning.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest in this episode, number 487, is JD Dylan, founder of every shift counts and author of the Frontline Enablement Playbook.
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[SPEAKER_00]: JD spent the first half of his career in Frontline operations, a decade at Disney supporting hospitality and contact center teams, and the last decade building technology used by 4 million Frontline workers around the world.
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[SPEAKER_02]: JD and I talk about why courses and conferences, the traditional backbone of a lot of learning businesses portfolios, don't fit how frontline work happens and what is more effective, reliable access to information at the point of need, connecting learners with peers who can show them how it's done, and short bursts of learning that can fit into a few minutes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and what works for front line learners also tends to work for people who sit at a desk, even though the root verse is often not true.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So this conversation isn't only for learning businesses that serve front line and desk-less workers, there's something here even if your learners have more control over their time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: JD and I also talk about how a learning business that sells into an organization needs to understand that the buyer, the manager, and the employee each care about something different.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So without further ado, here's the conversation with JD Dylan.
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[SPEAKER_02]: your most recent book is about front line workers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's the front line enablement playbook.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that you write in the book that you really scrutinized each word in the title other than the, that's where I got the pass.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But let's talk about the front line and how you define front line workers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting part of the conversation is because the first thing I, it's the first thing you always get asked because
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[SPEAKER_01]: most people, including people who support frontline teams, don't identify as frontline anything.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They identify as retail, grocery, and construction, and hospitality, the worlds in which they play.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The way that I look at this definition is the frontline workforce.
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[SPEAKER_01]: are the teams whose primary role is to work directly with your customer's products and services every day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, there are the people that we as a society rely on to keep the machine moving.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, retail grocery, health care, all of these different types of environments.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, in a lot of cases, they're customer-facing individuals who have to work on site, don't sit at a desk, all day are constantly moving, have a different relationship with information and technology,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in some cases, they're back of house, whether they're chefs in a restaurant or in a manufacturing facility working on the line or in the agricultural space, people that we don't regularly see as part of our day-to-day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But the commonalities are, you know, it's different types of work in different environments and different industries with different goals.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But the way the job is done, how people spend their time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And both the organizations as well as our reliance on them is consistent in a way
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, desk came up when you were talking about these folks and I know that desk lists is another word you use it in the subtitle.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think you may be considered it as kind of part of the main title, but what do you see is the difference between desk lists and front line to the extent that you see one at all.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you consider context-enter operations, so I spent about six years supporting context-enter operations and a higher education environment as well as physical campuses where people were directly working with students.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're a context-enter agent, you do set a desk all day and an almost painful way because you can't leave the desk.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll remember one of a context-enter is don't take people off the phone, because that's where the job is done and that's where sales are made and that's where customers are supported.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are different elements of that experience that support improved enablement and performance.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I can reach you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You might have an email address or Microsoft Teams account.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I, you're staring at a screen, you can pull up information when you need to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of that is missing when it comes to people who are in deskless environment like people who work in a movie theater or in a theme park.
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[SPEAKER_01]: However, there's still commonalities in terms of the fact that even if I work in the desk as a front line employee, I'm likely an hourly employee, I work a structured shift.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a ton of autonomy, like I said, I can't leave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the desk.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I can't decide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to stop taking phone calls for the next 30 minutes or so in order to do some additional training.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's just not how it works.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the elements of how the job is done, that lack of autonomy, that task focus, that customer focus are all there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's just a difference in terms of access to information and the tools that are used on the job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So like,
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[SPEAKER_01]: even if you're a context in our operations agent or maybe you're a of the front desk person in a health care facility.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are a bunch of different people who fit under the front line umbrella who are deskt, but they still have common attributes with those who kind of meet the deskless side of the workplace.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, great.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for that clarification and highlighting the similarities, kind of whether there is a desk there or not in terms of these frontline workers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: As I know, you know, a lot of frontline workers are employed by organizations that don't have human resources or an L&D function at all, you know, some car washes, mom and pop types, shops, those kinds of things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna ask you a leading question here for the leading learning podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Is that kind of need?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Something that associations and other types of learning businesses can help fill for frontline workers whose employers don't necessarily have those HR and L&D functions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a yes-an type of an answer, just because I do not think it requires a dedicated L&D end or HR function.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think part of the challenge with enablements of large distributed workforce is that we silo by function and tool and accountability and metrics in a way that actually is detrimental to the person doing the job because you have a corporate communications team pushing information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You have the
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[SPEAKER_01]: product owners pushing information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You have compliance and legal HR, learning and development, operations, and everywhere all of those conversations meet is the management team and the frontline employees who have to execute on all of their different priorities and instructions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think the more we silo the more difficult that gets when you look at smaller businesses or mid market businesses you start to see a natural consolidation of function because they just don't have that many people in a support center.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You look at a regional grocery chain, they might have four people in their corporate training team and they also own corporate communications and a bunch of other activities because they've naturally consolidated based on
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[SPEAKER_01]: but it also simplifies the experience for employees who are just looking for help to do the job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's less about needing these discrete corporate functions and more.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There just has to be someone.
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[SPEAKER_01]: who cares about helping people get the support they need to do their job effectively and have as positive experience they can in this job to make sure that they're getting value from it and then you know supporting the value to the organization.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's looking more at what people need to be successful in a drive-out comes and less about distinctly bucketing that by function.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that idea of having an enablement person who's kind of really focused on that and the outcome focus like you're saying and what those frontline employees really need to be able to do their job well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we just sound like then there is the potential for that enablement person to be drawing on many different sources, including potentially offerings that an association, you know, that's relevant to that field of profession might be providing an offering.
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[SPEAKER_01]: because they can't do everything themselves.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a multi-billion dollar company, you have the restores thing from a corporate perspective to be able to build resources internally and build tools internally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, it gets complicated because you have so many different competing siloed functions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's essential for someone who's playing that kind of enablement role in businesses that don't have so many people and so many tools to be able to reach out and get those resources.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the prototype is sales enablement.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's right there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the difference between the traditional corporate training team and the sales enablement team, whoever's driving sales enablement is goal oriented, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're driving pipeline and deals in terms of what they do.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Learning and development is one of the tools they have at their disposal, but they're directly connected into the CRO or VP of sales.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they're
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[SPEAKER_01]: driving outcomes by enabling the team.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's that same model.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're not building all of their own sales methodologies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're reaching out to the models that are proven to work in this type of environment, pulling in advisors and consultants and content and shaping the ecosystem in a way that helps drive the outcome but maximizes their resources because if you have one person, that one person even with AI,
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[SPEAKER_01]: and related tools at their disposal can't do everything on their own and they shouldn't be recreating the wheel given that other organizations, especially organizations that are in a similar space or similar business model or similar industries are likely struggling in the same types of ways.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So if we think about association learning portfolios for a minute, at least historically, they're often largely built around courses and conferences and certifications.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I want your take on how that kind of portfolio works, or potentially doesn't work for reaching those frontline workers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a fundamental gap in terms of traditional tactics and the reality of how the job is done.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you use auto mechanics, as an example, there's a lot of small shops in the auto mechanic space.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's just talk about the facility.
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[SPEAKER_01]: How many auto shops have a back room and our classroom setup where people can separate themselves from the work and sit down and not here, everything that's going on and focus on a course.
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[SPEAKER_01]: How many auto shops schedule the number of people where they can pull people?
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[SPEAKER_01]: out of the garage and away from customers and dedicate time to development.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So now it comes down to, all right, so if we need, if we want to scale support mechanism across this space, how do we do it in a way that's respectable how the job is done and actually fits and drives an outcome.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think part of that conversation is, can you make it easier for these organizations to make information available to their teams because they're working on with complex products?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, does everyone need their own knowledge basers?
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is shared knowledge base opportunity that you can make available.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So is it less selling courses and more selling reliable access to information in a way that's easily consumed and applied?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it, you know, there's still a place for courses in all of this story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't think it could be the primary mechanism or business model, same for events.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's huge value bringing people together and having conversations and sharing practices, but it's not something that you can regularly do because of how the work is done and how labor budgets are created.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But can you make it easier for people to access information?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Can you make it easier for people to practice?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in certain ways or working through certain challenges or working with, you know, a simulated model of a piece of equipment that they might not regularly see, but they need to be ready to handle when it happens or certain type of vehicle that, you know, when it rolls into the shop, they need to be ready to go knowing certain things how to repair the safely while referencing certain information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think regardless of
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[SPEAKER_01]: the industry and the type of work, there's a certain consistency in terms of what people need.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's reliable, access the information in a way that they can apply it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Increasingly in the front line, it's also about accessing information in the language that I prefer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And using tools that maybe I'm not the greatest reader that can help me understand and apply information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, is there a different way we can think about tooling people with resources?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, scaling those types of resources across an industry and being that type of team or that type of provider, as well as, you know, I've worked with providers that support associations and providing those practice activities and reinforcement activity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not just about courses.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's about, well, you know, if you work in a shop and you have.
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[SPEAKER_01]: three minutes today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we could provide an activity that a help refresh what you need to know or introduce a new topic to you for three minutes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe it's not it's similar to courses, but it's restructured to match the access points and the time availability people have on the job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when I talk about things like three minutes of shift, it doesn't sound like a lot like what can you even learn?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in three minutes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Three minutes every day of focused activity adds up pretty quickly versus a once a quarter we put everyone in a room and tell them stuff because that's just not how people can effectively consume and retain information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Three minutes a day actually matches how we work as people in terms of our memory and especially for able to apply the information quickly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's restructuring the model around how the job is done.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And what time is available because those are the biggest obstacles even in corporate environments people struggle with those exact same factors.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, I was going to say, you know, how much of is your critique of kind of the the course and event heavy approach to learning.
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[SPEAKER_02]: really specific to frontline workers, or is it just, again, it's what we know about how humans tend to work and learn best.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's in those shorter and more consistent births.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's in the flow of work, all of that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, based on my experience, I find enabling frontline workers to be infinitely more interesting than talking about corporate employees because it won.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It represents 80% of the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, we're talking about 2.7 billion people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Every environment has these unique attributes to them, where it's a puzzle, figuring out how to match how we can best support people, based on how people work, and the unique environment and challenges of that particular industry company workspace job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really interesting puzzle, but at the same time, if we figure this out for frontline workers, where we have practices that work in these types of environments, they transfer, because we're talking about people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And like you said, the limitations of a course,
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[SPEAKER_01]: mirror the limitations of a course, you know, from the front line to the corporate environment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The challenge is it doesn't go the other direction very often.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So tools and resources and technologies that work in a corporate setting have a hard time in front line environments because for some reason we decided as an industry that learning and development is a digital concept.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why, I don't think E-learning is that good and has been that helpful for the last 25 years to anybody, but it provided scale and consistency and speed, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's cheaper and faster to put people through that environment versus figuring out the logistics of putting people in a room, especially if those rooms are not all in the same place.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, you look at the frontline workforce, the vast majority of structured learning activity takes place, shoulder to shoulder with a peer or a manager and it's hands-on job training.
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[SPEAKER_01]: a conversation, we just don't have a whole bunch anymore.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of the things, if you make a work in the front line, where time is restricted, people in corporate roles, also don't have a lot of time, right, overloaded, all types of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But most corporate employees can maybe decline that meeting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of people are salaryed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So they can decide, you know, I'm going to stay late today or over the weekend I'm going to, which are things that most frontline workers, at least in certain parts of the world, just can't make those decisions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we often cut off their access to information as soon as they're clocked out for the day, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because rules.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's the cool thing is that if we have more conversations that are not necessarily focused on frontline industrial
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[SPEAKER_01]: of frontline and deskless workers, it works for everybody in a lot of cases.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We just rotate in the direction of people who sit at a desk and do their job the way I do my job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And forget, oh yes, 80% of the world doesn't do that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: where you brought up the sort of asynchronous side, the emphasis on these e-learning modules that can kind of be consumed on your own at whatever point or even if they're shorter than what, I guess maybe the typical module of this, even if it's that three minute thing, it's still kind of on your own doing it yourself.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I know that you see the value of social learning, the peer learning as you were saying there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess, you know, talk a little bit about,
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[SPEAKER_02]: how could that happen?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because like you're saying, those place-based events where you bring people together for the sharing, very valuable, also very hard, depending on the individuals you're trying to bring together, to get them there, to have that time out of the office, to be able to afford, bringing those sorts of people together.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you see that's working?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Perhaps to connect some of these frontline workers with other peers, socially, so that some of that transfer you're
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[SPEAKER_01]: couple of different things I've seen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One is thinking about cohorts differently, because a lot of people are moving through the same motion or trying to develop the same set of skills or move forward in the similar way, but they don't see one another and they're distributed in particular ways.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On boardings and easy example, you know, there are a lot of people being on boarder right now in the same company in different locations and never see one another.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a way that we can leverage technology to put people into a virtual cohort where they feel comfortable talking to people who are more like them and asking them questions this solves a problem that I see on the internet because for some reason there are a lot of frontline workers asking questions on red it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So they're in the subreddit of their company asking very tactical job questions where I sit there wonder.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Where's the trainer and or manager?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because these are easy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These shouldn't have turned the internet for this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And are you trusting Reddit?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But in a lot of cases, people are giving good information because it's a peer group that understands.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's usually, you know, Reddit is necessarily reflective of the entire employee experience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a lot of people are very loud and have opinions and you start to see trends when you pay attention to the things they talk about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there are examples in my book from those types of conversations.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I think there are ways to look at cohorts differently, even from a virtual perspective, just even just a chat group on an employee communication application that might put people into a group to say, hey, you all are on board at the same time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're running into situations and you can't get to your manager, your trainer doesn't know what they're doing, you can talk about and share your experience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it prompts people to say like, that was the first day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what are you still not thinking about?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So people know that they're not in this alone.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're not the only person onboarding in this company right now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They might just be the only person onboarding in this location or on this ship.
19:22.322 --> 19:29.650
[SPEAKER_01]: Another thing that company I worked with that works in the airport lounge space, one of their priorities was making their big company feel small.
19:30.558 --> 19:41.080
[SPEAKER_01]: So they always look for ways to connect people through social tools, so that they could learn from one another, but also experience different activities with one another.
19:41.120 --> 19:44.581
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was less about kind of social media type activities.
19:44.601 --> 19:51.883
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we over rotate and thinking people will act at work like they act on Instagram when they're nowhere near as interested.
19:52.423 --> 19:56.067
[SPEAKER_01]: and what they're doing every day, nor willing to be like, let's take photos of everything.
19:56.367 --> 20:05.756
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you prompt people in certain directions and you recognize people for certain types of sharing, people are more likely to engage, not everybody, but some people will engage, and that's an element of the story.
20:06.557 --> 20:12.123
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's one other thing I'm trying to remember what it was that I had an idea, that connection of people.
20:12.755 --> 20:16.677
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, an example from another organization I worked with in the retail space.
20:16.877 --> 20:26.802
[SPEAKER_01]: So this person was trying to figure out how to improve product knowledge across a network of retail stores, and they don't come from a training background.
20:27.483 --> 20:29.524
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but they do come from a media background.
20:29.964 --> 20:40.630
[SPEAKER_01]: So instead of building e-learning, or any of that kind of traditional solution, they just went to a store with their phone and recorded a conversation they had with an employee about a particular product.
20:41.290 --> 20:55.226
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's that idea, you wouldn't necessarily look at that and think it's a social activity, but it featured people who look like me, who do the job that I do, talking about how they have conversations about certain products or solve certain problems in the same environment.
20:55.306 --> 21:00.532
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think we make a mistake in assuming that people who do this job every day are going to react to either...
21:01.233 --> 21:07.016
[SPEAKER_01]: content that content that doesn't reflect their reality or content that's coming from corporate or the executive team.
21:07.356 --> 21:12.498
[SPEAKER_01]: When a lot of places people want to see people like them, so it may be someone from my company, maybe just someone who does my job.
21:12.998 --> 21:18.121
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're a mechanic and I'm a mechanic, we just reflect differently.
21:18.561 --> 21:22.663
[SPEAKER_01]: Another company I was talking to the other day does they sell content for people who do roofing.
21:23.323 --> 21:28.510
[SPEAKER_01]: and their videos are kind of low production videos of people on a roof.
21:28.971 --> 21:32.796
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a guy who clearly does this job talking about how he does particular things.
21:33.197 --> 21:39.345
[SPEAKER_01]: So reflecting the world in which these people work and leveraging people who have credibility,
21:40.161 --> 21:42.283
[SPEAKER_01]: in their willingness to share what they're doing.
21:42.583 --> 21:46.887
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we can have a whole conversation about the effect of use of AI avatars in this story.
21:47.227 --> 21:52.252
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, Todd's example from product videos is in my book.
21:52.652 --> 21:57.957
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also the reason why this is the only book about frontline performance that will ever include a deer urine story.
21:59.190 --> 22:01.453
[SPEAKER_01]: He works in a retail store that sells deer urine.
22:01.994 --> 22:05.599
[SPEAKER_01]: So he shot a video about deer urine and then wacky things happen.
22:05.959 --> 22:07.361
[SPEAKER_01]: In that video, but guess what?
22:07.602 --> 22:10.486
[SPEAKER_01]: After the video gets released, they sold more deer urine, and that's the point.
22:16.675 --> 22:25.082
[SPEAKER_02]: You brought up AI avatars, so I think I'm going to ask you about just the use of AI among frontline workers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you brought up like Reddit, you know, those people turning there.
22:29.246 --> 22:32.229
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, to what extent do you see AI as a
22:34.991 --> 22:48.875
[SPEAKER_02]: threat, uh, tool, uh, you know, how do you sort of view it because there can be workers just turning directly to, you know, whatever they might have access to on their own phone or, or if they do have access to a computer, just, you know, that way.
22:50.436 --> 22:53.477
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for online workers have been looking up stuff on the internet on their own devices forever.
22:53.897 --> 22:56.498
[SPEAKER_01]: So none of this is still, whether it's approved or not.
22:58.140 --> 23:09.105
[SPEAKER_01]: My research, as well as my experience around the use of AI in frontline teams, one has to be informed by the fact that, again, we leave frontline workers out of conversations around the future of work.
23:09.565 --> 23:23.692
[SPEAKER_01]: Constantly, the remote and hybrid work conversations are a great example where the vast majority of workers have no option, and at no point did we include, because the hybrid remote work conversations ultimately a conversation about workplace flexibility.
23:24.152 --> 23:27.413
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you can have a conversation about workplace flexibility with frontline workers, too.
23:27.813 --> 23:31.555
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's more about scheduling practices and making it easy to trade shifts.
23:31.675 --> 23:44.720
[SPEAKER_01]: And that type of stuff where there is a role for technology to play to make all of that more seamless because today, you should not require a manager to be less busy to figure out if you can adjust your schedule.
23:44.760 --> 23:46.261
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we should have figured this one out by now.
23:46.861 --> 23:50.883
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a whole future work conversation that's missing from the frontline workforce.
23:51.623 --> 24:09.112
[SPEAKER_01]: and that includes the broader conversation on AI, where I'm excited about what the tech can do now for front-line workers and I doesn't have anything to do with the word agentic, but when you talk about AI in the front-line workforce, it's a combination of how tools are used and how people are impacted in a very specific way.
24:09.692 --> 24:15.718
[SPEAKER_01]: I find frontline workers are way less concerned about this because I think there's a level of stability in frontline work.
24:15.838 --> 24:23.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of people do these jobs understand the value that they provide and the automation conversations have been impacting them for decades at this point.
24:23.870 --> 24:27.333
[SPEAKER_01]: because companies are finding ways to reduce labor hours.
24:27.693 --> 24:33.578
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a constant trouble to be able just to get my hours to get the paycheck I need if you work in these jobs in a lot of cases.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's not new.
24:35.160 --> 24:36.220
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the nature of this work.
24:36.301 --> 24:39.703
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot newer on the corporate side of the conversation right now.
24:40.504 --> 24:46.690
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you look at existing technology capabilities, inclusive of AI, there's certain things there.
24:47.351 --> 24:51.575
[SPEAKER_01]: Simple example, access the information and just be able to ask a question and get an answer back.
24:52.115 --> 25:03.146
[SPEAKER_01]: Huge when it comes to these jobs, because how often you just relying on the person next to you to be able to answer whatever question a customer comes in with, and customers come in with way more information than they used to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of them.
25:04.247 --> 25:10.911
[SPEAKER_01]: When I buy a car, I know more about the car than the person selling me the car because I'm doing a ridiculous amount of research and then coming into the conversation informed.
25:11.451 --> 25:24.078
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is true in retail, it's true in hotel environments in terms of the services available this hotel restaurants in terms of the ingredients and the food like people just know things and therefore have a higher expectation of what the employees know and are able to do.
25:24.578 --> 25:33.381
[SPEAKER_01]: So having information at your disposal where if you just started yesterday, you've been here for 30 years, we can level out that knowledge base a little bit more.
25:33.821 --> 25:38.162
[SPEAKER_01]: The translation piece of things is huge for frontline workers.
25:38.182 --> 25:48.285
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that we are going from a world where when I was developing training in a corporate environment, we had to pick, because translation was a time consuming and expensive problem.
25:48.866 --> 25:49.026
[SPEAKER_01]: So
25:50.126 --> 26:01.049
[SPEAKER_01]: We may be translated information to 3 to 4 languages, the most commonly spoken languages in our environment, not knowing who did we just leave behind because they just need information communicated differently.
26:01.109 --> 26:07.031
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I was in tech, one of my favorite things to do was to pull language information from the customer base.
26:07.391 --> 26:09.232
[SPEAKER_01]: And just to see who was using
26:10.072 --> 26:11.612
[SPEAKER_01]: our tools in what languages.
26:11.952 --> 26:19.994
[SPEAKER_01]: And I loved finding a company where there was one employee in one region of the world who was picking one particular language.
26:20.414 --> 26:30.657
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that was the whole point, right, is that that one person now has a chance, where in the past they spent a lot of time potentially just understanding information yet alone learning or applying anything.
26:30.677 --> 26:37.939
[SPEAKER_01]: So translation in all forms, while not perfect by any means, AI is still largely written in English in terms of
26:40.159 --> 26:45.724
[SPEAKER_01]: we can do more to the point where when I present in different languages, I translate all of my own stuff.
26:46.144 --> 26:52.630
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm usually near to perfect, but I always have someone who's at expertise in that language review.
26:52.990 --> 27:01.198
[SPEAKER_01]: The information for me when it's important, but just kind of like social exchanges, basic communication stuff, we can translate that in a large number of languages now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: as well as we need to be able to.
27:04.700 --> 27:16.047
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the one layer deeper I already kind of mentioned this is the fact that regardless of what the job description says, you have a lot of people who are doing these jobs who are not great readers for different reasons.
27:16.507 --> 27:23.972
[SPEAKER_01]: So a fact that we can now use language differently and people can talk to and engage with information and get the information to come back to them.
27:25.279 --> 27:26.020
[SPEAKER_01]: That's meaningful.
27:26.702 --> 27:33.134
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, in a way that we tend not to have to think about an corporate environment, there's obviously accessibility considerations in all of that, that kind of side of it.
27:33.214 --> 27:33.414
[SPEAKER_01]: But...
27:34.557 --> 27:46.419
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just the fact that maybe before, okay, I put a mobile device in your hand and it can translate the information great, but what if you can't read or just can't read well, well now you can talk to the information and the information can talk back.
27:46.760 --> 28:02.763
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's it's things like that that could knock down or reduce some significant barriers in terms of people's ability to learn and perform on the job that are driven by AI that don't have to be complex workflow automations and and all that kind of stuff and the one of the thing out at is.
28:03.403 --> 28:10.865
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a key thing to consider around how AI's being used in ways that impact people that don't have anything to do with the tools they use in the job every day.
28:11.425 --> 28:15.326
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're using AI for hiring practices, you're using it for scheduling practices.
28:15.847 --> 28:27.170
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's in some way being the data and AI's being used to make or to inform decisions around promotion and training, we have to keep in mind that people need to know.
28:28.215 --> 28:33.937
[SPEAKER_01]: how that works, how tools are being used to influence their earning potential and their lives.
28:35.098 --> 28:44.882
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially because there are a lot of frontline environments where you absolutely have to make that information available because you're working in a unionized environment or you're working in a highly regulated environment or we're in Europe at all.
28:45.542 --> 28:49.604
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are distinct ways where technology and data influence
28:50.564 --> 28:57.728
[SPEAKER_01]: the job and the meaning and motivation behind the job that we have to make sure is clear, and it can't be a black box.
28:58.208 --> 29:00.989
[SPEAKER_01]: That managers can't explain why people are getting hours.
29:01.330 --> 29:03.311
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it has to be explicit.
29:04.131 --> 29:07.153
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people are very much not going to care about that story.
29:07.173 --> 29:10.795
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people are very much going to care and click the little question mark next to.
29:11.675 --> 29:13.997
[SPEAKER_01]: whatever information and want to understand.
29:14.478 --> 29:15.859
[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I getting recommended this training?
29:16.219 --> 29:18.542
[SPEAKER_01]: Or why am I being scheduled in a particular way?
29:18.582 --> 29:20.964
[SPEAKER_01]: Or why didn't I get recommended for promotion?
29:21.164 --> 29:24.868
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to be able to answer those questions based on why people do this work.
29:31.555 --> 29:49.066
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've been talking a lot about the importance of reaching workers on the job in their actual workflow and that's a real goal that has real benefits of being able to do that associations and other learning businesses obviously have a hurdle that those internal L&D teams don't.
29:49.486 --> 29:55.529
[SPEAKER_02]: They can't as readily reach those individuals, those frontline employees as directly as easily.
29:56.670 --> 30:06.933
[SPEAKER_02]: They might be selling to the employer and then their access to that worker is kind of limited to or mediated through the employer or potentially managers.
30:07.673 --> 30:14.616
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that this kind of proximity issue exists in other contexts too, like franchises in some of those other contexts.
30:14.676 --> 30:20.778
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would just love to hear a little bit about how you might solve for that kind of distance issue or at least
30:26.219 --> 30:31.600
[SPEAKER_01]: the motivating factor for the buyer, the manager and the employee only to make sense based on what they care about.
30:33.021 --> 30:35.621
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer to all of those is not learning.
30:36.881 --> 30:45.603
[SPEAKER_01]: Because fundamentally, no one in the operation side of a business from the employee through the entire hierarchy, fundamentally cares about the concept of learning.
30:45.963 --> 30:52.205
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't use the word learning very much at all for the past 10 years, despite the fact that I've been an employee enablement to performance the whole time.
30:52.905 --> 31:09.270
[SPEAKER_01]: However, I talked about things like confidence and capability and safety and risk and those factors and I think it's critical that whatever the solution is, it has to check the box in terms of something I care about for the person who's making the decision to bring into the organization.
31:09.330 --> 31:13.932
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I'm if you're selling to the VP of operations or the CLO or whoever it might be.
31:14.572 --> 31:18.994
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I care about, like care about growing the business and outcomes associated to that?
31:19.154 --> 31:22.636
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, how is this solution going to help me and the answer is never learning?
31:23.376 --> 31:26.178
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something about the capability of writing it.
31:26.238 --> 31:30.620
[SPEAKER_01]: I love using the term readiness around operations teams because they understand.
31:31.340 --> 31:32.521
[SPEAKER_01]: that we need to be ready, right?
31:32.561 --> 31:33.421
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we do need to be ready.
31:33.441 --> 31:34.302
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it take to be ready?
31:34.722 --> 31:39.346
[SPEAKER_01]: And knowledge and skill and capability are all underneath that, but it's not the headline.
31:39.486 --> 31:40.787
[SPEAKER_01]: It's supporting capabilities.
31:41.247 --> 31:44.689
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you drop it down to the management team because the management team owns the day.
31:45.470 --> 31:49.532
[SPEAKER_01]: They're actually your most important stakeholder because if you don't have them, you have nothing.
31:49.813 --> 31:51.994
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to franchise operations, it's an example.
31:52.034 --> 31:53.275
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, corporate may love it.
31:53.295 --> 31:55.637
[SPEAKER_01]: The franchise, you may love it, but once you hit the restaurant,
31:56.237 --> 32:04.780
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, the shift manager has something to do and they have a limit number of people to do it and they're facing off against the customers and the food inspectors here and all of that type of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So how is what you're providing going to help me manager hit what I need to hit because usually managers make decisions based on two criteria one what's going to get me a phone call.
32:16.255 --> 32:19.836
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do whatever takes nothing to the phone call and to how I'm bonus.
32:20.376 --> 32:27.498
[SPEAKER_01]: So the metrics that impact my compensation and the things I'm held accountable for by my boss, how does this help me with those things?
32:27.938 --> 32:31.719
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to earn the time and access that you need to be able to reach.
32:32.379 --> 32:35.560
[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, all the managers should be included in the solution as well as the employee.
32:36.385 --> 32:47.397
[SPEAKER_02]: If you were to point to something that you hope listeners take away from our conversation today, what would you most like them to remember or to think about after hearing this?
32:48.848 --> 32:57.594
[SPEAKER_01]: Managers, the most important people in the workplace so if you invest in anything, when it comes to enabling frontline teams, look straight at the managers because of how much they influence the experience.
32:58.175 --> 33:12.405
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more that you understand how the job gets done and the workflow, the more likely you are to be able to shape a solution that people will actually use, actually get value from, and you'll actually be able to retain that organization, that customer base.
33:12.785 --> 33:14.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause so often things sound like a great idea.
33:16.015 --> 33:18.817
[SPEAKER_01]: the buyer leans in because it's trendy, it's AI, right?
33:20.038 --> 33:21.579
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you slam into reality.
33:22.299 --> 33:33.066
[SPEAKER_01]: And people aren't motivated to take advantage of solution, don't have time to take advantage of it, and then you have a really short relationship with that stakeholder or that buyer and that organization.
33:33.166 --> 33:41.472
[SPEAKER_01]: So the, you know, being a person who came from the technology space for the last 10 years, what I think made me effective was that I did the homework.
33:42.425 --> 33:44.006
[SPEAKER_01]: And I spend a lot of time in grocery stores.
33:44.626 --> 33:50.408
[SPEAKER_01]: And I not only understood how a grocery store works, but I understand what the owner of a grocery store very much cares about.
33:51.088 --> 33:56.010
[SPEAKER_01]: And one particular gentleman said something to me that is in the book, and it echoes in the back of my head.
33:56.030 --> 34:02.192
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the fact that I come from frontline operations means I don't just think about ideas and principles and practices.
34:02.232 --> 34:03.072
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking about people.
34:03.853 --> 34:05.834
[SPEAKER_01]: when I make decisions or when I make recommendations.
34:05.874 --> 34:14.359
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's the experience I had with these individuals and what I learned from them that I'm pulling together to shape a method and a framework and practice.
34:14.379 --> 34:19.102
[SPEAKER_01]: And this one individual who runs a set of grocery stores said to me, JD, I'm not changing for you.
34:19.802 --> 34:21.343
[SPEAKER_01]: I want Spandex, not concrete.
34:22.610 --> 34:28.292
[SPEAKER_01]: I, he needed a solution that wrapped around how he runs his business because he's not going to change his business for what I can do.
34:28.632 --> 34:30.553
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an expert in human performance.
34:30.833 --> 34:32.274
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an expert in the grocery business.
34:32.674 --> 34:48.460
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have to meet him where he is and the more he can do that, especially if you specialize in an industry like go back to the automotive mechanic space, if you specialize in automotive, you need to know automotive, not just sell to automotive because, again, people who run these businesses and own these businesses, this is what they do.
34:50.067 --> 34:50.707
[SPEAKER_01]: It's serious.
34:51.028 --> 35:00.857
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had so many conversations with grocery store owners about loss prevention and waste and cheese For some reason whenever I visit a grocery store people want to show me the cheese case
35:02.909 --> 35:04.089
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd want to see the cheesecake.
35:04.229 --> 35:05.970
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a higher margin product, right?
35:06.090 --> 35:10.491
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they'll also walk me through the spoilage process in terms of produce, right?
35:10.511 --> 35:12.892
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they want to talk about the, you know, they try to sell the pepper.
35:13.412 --> 35:16.253
[SPEAKER_01]: And if the pepper doesn't sell, they slice up the pepper and they put it in packaging.
35:16.273 --> 35:17.853
[SPEAKER_01]: So they sell you three sliced peppers.
35:18.173 --> 35:20.794
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't buy it by the sell-by date, in that case, then slice it up more.
35:20.994 --> 35:21.894
[SPEAKER_01]: They put it in a salad.
35:21.914 --> 35:24.575
[SPEAKER_01]: So they try to sell you the fully made food product.
35:24.835 --> 35:27.876
[SPEAKER_01]: If that doesn't sell, well, then we have a waste situations to do and everything they can.
35:28.076 --> 35:28.956
[SPEAKER_01]: So they need the employees,
35:29.756 --> 35:35.522
[SPEAKER_01]: to understand that because a waste prevention spoilage made your cost for a low margin business.
35:35.542 --> 35:37.464
[SPEAKER_01]: So they definitely want you to understand those things.
35:37.484 --> 35:42.389
[SPEAKER_01]: So do you understand for whatever business that you support or that you're selling products or services to?
35:42.769 --> 35:45.112
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you understand their version of that?
35:45.152 --> 35:47.554
[SPEAKER_01]: So they can go in and you can have a conversation.
35:47.794 --> 35:51.859
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I go to a manufacturing facility and the VP of safety is sitting there.
35:52.419 --> 36:04.491
[SPEAKER_01]: I am absolutely not saying the worth learning in this meeting, but I'm going to say is an important to you as the Vice President of Safety to have a capable confident team that's ready to make the right decision to the right time, to keep the line moving, to keep people safe.
36:04.971 --> 36:07.674
[SPEAKER_01]: I know the person on the other side of the desk is going to say that is absolutely important.
36:08.249 --> 36:10.352
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're going to talk about how we're going to be able to get there.
36:10.432 --> 36:23.688
[SPEAKER_01]: So do the homework and understand and appreciate and respect the work that is done by these folks every day so that you can provide a solution that that makes a clear that you're contributing to their industry and their business.
36:23.708 --> 36:24.750
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not just trying to sell them stuff.
36:31.860 --> 36:33.681
[SPEAKER_00]: That wraps up the conversation with J.D.
36:33.701 --> 36:36.623
[SPEAKER_00]: Dylan, author of The Frontline Enablement Playbook.
36:37.103 --> 36:38.363
[SPEAKER_00]: Stay with us for our recap.
36:38.704 --> 36:49.449
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll find show notes in a transcript for this episode at leadinglearning.com slash episode 4-8-7, along with links to where you can learn more about The Frontline Enablement Playbook and about J.D.'
36:49.429 --> 36:50.310
[SPEAKER_02]: 's work in general.
36:50.770 --> 36:56.093
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you found this episode valuable, we would be grateful if you'd share it so more people can find the show.
36:56.853 --> 37:02.819
[SPEAKER_00]: One point JD makes is that courses and events alone aren't effective for frontline workers.
37:02.859 --> 37:04.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Their jobs simply don't allow for it.
37:05.481 --> 37:18.053
[SPEAKER_00]: He points learning businesses instead toward reliable access to information, connecting workers with peers who can show them how it's really done and short frequent practice that fits in to the gaps and a shift.
37:18.753 --> 37:24.719
[SPEAKER_00]: and he argues that what works for frontline learners tends to transfer to people who sit at a desk.
37:25.139 --> 37:32.726
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if frontline and deskless workers aren't who your learning business serves, there's likely something here worth borrowing.
37:33.346 --> 37:45.097
[SPEAKER_02]: And when it comes to reaching the frontline workforce, JD's advice is to design for the buyer, the manager, and the employee with a particular focus on the manager since they own the day-to-day experience.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening and see you next time on the LeadingLearning podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you're in the right place.
00:09.150 --> 00:10.212
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Celisa Steele.
00:10.633 --> 00:14.039
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jeff Cobb, and this is the leading learning pod.
00:17.745 --> 00:19.447
[SPEAKER_02]: help center agents, nurses.
00:19.787 --> 00:28.956
[SPEAKER_02]: The people fixing your car and ringing you up at the grocery store, they're all part of the frontline workforce, which makes up roughly 80% of the global workforce.
00:29.556 --> 00:38.465
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, when we talk about learning, we're usually picturing someone with a desk and the ability to decide to carve out dedicated time for focused learning.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest in this episode, number 487, is JD Dylan, founder of every shift counts and author of the Frontline Enablement Playbook.
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[SPEAKER_00]: JD spent the first half of his career in Frontline operations, a decade at Disney supporting hospitality and contact center teams, and the last decade building technology used by 4 million Frontline workers around the world.
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[SPEAKER_02]: JD and I talk about why courses and conferences, the traditional backbone of a lot of learning businesses portfolios, don't fit how frontline work happens and what is more effective, reliable access to information at the point of need, connecting learners with peers who can show them how it's done, and short bursts of learning that can fit into a few minutes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and what works for front line learners also tends to work for people who sit at a desk, even though the root verse is often not true.
01:31.056 --> 01:40.143
[SPEAKER_00]: So this conversation isn't only for learning businesses that serve front line and desk-less workers, there's something here even if your learners have more control over their time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: JD and I also talk about how a learning business that sells into an organization needs to understand that the buyer, the manager, and the employee each care about something different.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So without further ado, here's the conversation with JD Dylan.
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[SPEAKER_02]: your most recent book is about front line workers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's the front line enablement playbook.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that you write in the book that you really scrutinized each word in the title other than the, that's where I got the pass.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But let's talk about the front line and how you define front line workers.
02:19.020 --> 02:24.542
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting part of the conversation is because the first thing I, it's the first thing you always get asked because
02:25.896 --> 02:31.161
[SPEAKER_01]: most people, including people who support frontline teams, don't identify as frontline anything.
02:31.521 --> 02:36.965
[SPEAKER_01]: They identify as retail, grocery, and construction, and hospitality, the worlds in which they play.
02:37.826 --> 02:41.890
[SPEAKER_01]: The way that I look at this definition is the frontline workforce.
02:42.590 --> 02:47.554
[SPEAKER_01]: are the teams whose primary role is to work directly with your customer's products and services every day.
02:47.974 --> 02:53.599
[SPEAKER_01]: So, there are the people that we as a society rely on to keep the machine moving.
02:53.779 --> 02:58.723
[SPEAKER_01]: So, retail grocery, health care, all of these different types of environments.
02:58.743 --> 03:09.411
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in a lot of cases, they're customer-facing individuals who have to work on site, don't sit at a desk, all day are constantly moving, have a different relationship with information and technology,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in some cases, they're back of house, whether they're chefs in a restaurant or in a manufacturing facility working on the line or in the agricultural space, people that we don't regularly see as part of our day-to-day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But the commonalities are, you know, it's different types of work in different environments and different industries with different goals.
03:29.361 --> 03:32.343
[SPEAKER_01]: But the way the job is done, how people spend their time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And both the organizations as well as our reliance on them is consistent in a way
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, desk came up when you were talking about these folks and I know that desk lists is another word you use it in the subtitle.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think you may be considered it as kind of part of the main title, but what do you see is the difference between desk lists and front line to the extent that you see one at all.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you consider context-enter operations, so I spent about six years supporting context-enter operations and a higher education environment as well as physical campuses where people were directly working with students.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're a context-enter agent, you do set a desk all day and an almost painful way because you can't leave the desk.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll remember one of a context-enter is don't take people off the phone, because that's where the job is done and that's where sales are made and that's where customers are supported.
04:27.908 --> 04:33.652
[SPEAKER_01]: There are different elements of that experience that support improved enablement and performance.
04:34.132 --> 04:34.933
[SPEAKER_01]: I can reach you.
04:35.393 --> 04:37.875
[SPEAKER_01]: You might have an email address or Microsoft Teams account.
04:38.757 --> 04:42.861
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you're staring at a screen, you can pull up information when you need to.
04:43.601 --> 04:48.926
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of that is missing when it comes to people who are in deskless environment like people who work in a movie theater or in a theme park.
04:49.486 --> 04:58.014
[SPEAKER_01]: However, there's still commonalities in terms of the fact that even if I work in the desk as a front line employee, I'm likely an hourly employee, I work a structured shift.
04:58.274 --> 05:01.177
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a ton of autonomy, like I said, I can't leave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the desk.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I can't decide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to stop taking phone calls for the next 30 minutes or so in order to do some additional training.
05:07.483 --> 05:08.404
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just not how it works.
05:08.585 --> 05:15.672
[SPEAKER_01]: So the elements of how the job is done, that lack of autonomy, that task focus, that customer focus are all there.
05:16.153 --> 05:20.317
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just a difference in terms of access to information and the tools that are used on the job.
05:20.357 --> 05:20.577
[SPEAKER_01]: So like,
05:21.218 --> 05:27.040
[SPEAKER_01]: even if you're a context in our operations agent or maybe you're a of the front desk person in a health care facility.
05:27.540 --> 05:35.922
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a bunch of different people who fit under the front line umbrella who are deskt, but they still have common attributes with those who kind of meet the deskless side of the workplace.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, great.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for that clarification and highlighting the similarities, kind of whether there is a desk there or not in terms of these frontline workers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: As I know, you know, a lot of frontline workers are employed by organizations that don't have human resources or an L&D function at all, you know, some car washes, mom and pop types, shops, those kinds of things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna ask you a leading question here for the leading learning podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Is that kind of need?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Something that associations and other types of learning businesses can help fill for frontline workers whose employers don't necessarily have those HR and L&D functions.
06:15.962 --> 06:22.847
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a yes-an type of an answer, just because I do not think it requires a dedicated L&D end or HR function.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think part of the challenge with enablements of large distributed workforce is that we silo by function and tool and accountability and metrics in a way that actually is detrimental to the person doing the job because you have a corporate communications team pushing information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You have the
06:42.161 --> 06:44.122
[SPEAKER_01]: product owners pushing information.
06:44.142 --> 06:57.748
[SPEAKER_01]: You have compliance and legal HR, learning and development, operations, and everywhere all of those conversations meet is the management team and the frontline employees who have to execute on all of their different priorities and instructions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think the more we silo the more difficult that gets when you look at smaller businesses or mid market businesses you start to see a natural consolidation of function because they just don't have that many people in a support center.
07:09.754 --> 07:21.280
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at a regional grocery chain, they might have four people in their corporate training team and they also own corporate communications and a bunch of other activities because they've naturally consolidated based on
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[SPEAKER_01]: but it also simplifies the experience for employees who are just looking for help to do the job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's less about needing these discrete corporate functions and more.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There just has to be someone.
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[SPEAKER_01]: who cares about helping people get the support they need to do their job effectively and have as positive experience they can in this job to make sure that they're getting value from it and then you know supporting the value to the organization.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's looking more at what people need to be successful in a drive-out comes and less about distinctly bucketing that by function.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that idea of having an enablement person who's kind of really focused on that and the outcome focus like you're saying and what those frontline employees really need to be able to do their job well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we just sound like then there is the potential for that enablement person to be drawing on many different sources, including potentially offerings that an association, you know, that's relevant to that field of profession might be providing an offering.
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[SPEAKER_01]: because they can't do everything themselves.
08:19.341 --> 08:28.485
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a multi-billion dollar company, you have the restores thing from a corporate perspective to be able to build resources internally and build tools internally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, it gets complicated because you have so many different competing siloed functions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's essential for someone who's playing that kind of enablement role in businesses that don't have so many people and so many tools to be able to reach out and get those resources.
08:42.170 --> 08:43.891
[SPEAKER_01]: And the prototype is sales enablement.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's right there.
08:45.721 --> 08:53.407
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the difference between the traditional corporate training team and the sales enablement team, whoever's driving sales enablement is goal oriented, right?
08:53.447 --> 08:56.909
[SPEAKER_01]: They're driving pipeline and deals in terms of what they do.
08:57.810 --> 09:04.655
[SPEAKER_01]: Learning and development is one of the tools they have at their disposal, but they're directly connected into the CRO or VP of sales.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they're
09:05.976 --> 09:08.737
[SPEAKER_01]: driving outcomes by enabling the team.
09:09.158 --> 09:10.438
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that same model.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're not building all of their own sales methodologies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're reaching out to the models that are proven to work in this type of environment, pulling in advisors and consultants and content and shaping the ecosystem in a way that helps drive the outcome but maximizes their resources because if you have one person, that one person even with AI,
09:31.528 --> 09:48.170
[SPEAKER_01]: and related tools at their disposal can't do everything on their own and they shouldn't be recreating the wheel given that other organizations, especially organizations that are in a similar space or similar business model or similar industries are likely struggling in the same types of ways.
09:51.017 --> 10:00.760
[SPEAKER_02]: So if we think about association learning portfolios for a minute, at least historically, they're often largely built around courses and conferences and certifications.
10:01.420 --> 10:09.303
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want your take on how that kind of portfolio works, or potentially doesn't work for reaching those frontline workers.
10:10.130 --> 10:15.034
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a fundamental gap in terms of traditional tactics and the reality of how the job is done.
10:15.774 --> 10:20.978
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you use auto mechanics, as an example, there's a lot of small shops in the auto mechanic space.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's just talk about the facility.
10:23.980 --> 10:35.309
[SPEAKER_01]: How many auto shops have a back room and our classroom setup where people can separate themselves from the work and sit down and not here, everything that's going on and focus on a course.
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[SPEAKER_01]: How many auto shops schedule the number of people where they can pull people?
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[SPEAKER_01]: out of the garage and away from customers and dedicate time to development.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So now it comes down to, all right, so if we need, if we want to scale support mechanism across this space, how do we do it in a way that's respectable how the job is done and actually fits and drives an outcome.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think part of that conversation is, can you make it easier for these organizations to make information available to their teams because they're working on with complex products?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, does everyone need their own knowledge basers?
11:07.502 --> 11:10.264
[SPEAKER_01]: There is shared knowledge base opportunity that you can make available.
11:10.324 --> 11:17.128
[SPEAKER_01]: So is it less selling courses and more selling reliable access to information in a way that's easily consumed and applied?
11:17.948 --> 11:20.850
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it, you know, there's still a place for courses in all of this story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't think it could be the primary mechanism or business model, same for events.
11:24.513 --> 11:35.601
[SPEAKER_01]: There's huge value bringing people together and having conversations and sharing practices, but it's not something that you can regularly do because of how the work is done and how labor budgets are created.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But can you make it easier for people to access information?
11:38.603 --> 11:41.045
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you make it easier for people to practice?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in certain ways or working through certain challenges or working with, you know, a simulated model of a piece of equipment that they might not regularly see, but they need to be ready to handle when it happens or certain type of vehicle that, you know, when it rolls into the shop, they need to be ready to go knowing certain things how to repair the safely while referencing certain information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think regardless of
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[SPEAKER_01]: the industry and the type of work, there's a certain consistency in terms of what people need.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's reliable, access the information in a way that they can apply it.
12:11.099 --> 12:16.140
[SPEAKER_01]: Increasingly in the front line, it's also about accessing information in the language that I prefer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And using tools that maybe I'm not the greatest reader that can help me understand and apply information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, is there a different way we can think about tooling people with resources?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, scaling those types of resources across an industry and being that type of team or that type of provider, as well as, you know, I've worked with providers that support associations and providing those practice activities and reinforcement activity.
12:41.595 --> 12:42.816
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not just about courses.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's about, well, you know, if you work in a shop and you have.
12:46.239 --> 12:47.280
[SPEAKER_01]: three minutes today.
12:47.440 --> 12:52.966
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we could provide an activity that a help refresh what you need to know or introduce a new topic to you for three minutes.
12:52.986 --> 13:02.455
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe it's not it's similar to courses, but it's restructured to match the access points and the time availability people have on the job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when I talk about things like three minutes of shift, it doesn't sound like a lot like what can you even learn?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in three minutes.
13:08.821 --> 13:22.286
[SPEAKER_01]: Three minutes every day of focused activity adds up pretty quickly versus a once a quarter we put everyone in a room and tell them stuff because that's just not how people can effectively consume and retain information.
13:22.647 --> 13:30.430
[SPEAKER_01]: Three minutes a day actually matches how we work as people in terms of our memory and especially for able to apply the information quickly.
13:30.770 --> 13:34.272
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's restructuring the model around how the job is done.
13:35.427 --> 13:42.272
[SPEAKER_01]: And what time is available because those are the biggest obstacles even in corporate environments people struggle with those exact same factors.
13:42.752 --> 13:49.978
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, I was going to say, you know, how much of is your critique of kind of the the course and event heavy approach to learning.
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[SPEAKER_02]: really specific to frontline workers, or is it just, again, it's what we know about how humans tend to work and learn best.
13:59.132 --> 14:01.793
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in those shorter and more consistent births.
14:02.034 --> 14:03.574
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in the flow of work, all of that.
14:04.114 --> 14:14.659
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, based on my experience, I find enabling frontline workers to be infinitely more interesting than talking about corporate employees because it won.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It represents 80% of the world.
14:16.280 --> 14:17.780
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, we're talking about 2.7 billion people.
14:22.410 --> 14:36.920
[SPEAKER_01]: Every environment has these unique attributes to them, where it's a puzzle, figuring out how to match how we can best support people, based on how people work, and the unique environment and challenges of that particular industry company workspace job.
14:37.300 --> 14:46.947
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really interesting puzzle, but at the same time, if we figure this out for frontline workers, where we have practices that work in these types of environments, they transfer, because we're talking about people.
14:47.547 --> 14:50.269
[SPEAKER_01]: And like you said, the limitations of a course,
14:51.877 --> 14:55.479
[SPEAKER_01]: mirror the limitations of a course, you know, from the front line to the corporate environment.
14:56.239 --> 14:58.541
[SPEAKER_01]: The challenge is it doesn't go the other direction very often.
14:59.101 --> 15:12.208
[SPEAKER_01]: So tools and resources and technologies that work in a corporate setting have a hard time in front line environments because for some reason we decided as an industry that learning and development is a digital concept.
15:14.004 --> 15:25.391
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why, I don't think E-learning is that good and has been that helpful for the last 25 years to anybody, but it provided scale and consistency and speed, right?
15:25.732 --> 15:33.036
[SPEAKER_01]: It's cheaper and faster to put people through that environment versus figuring out the logistics of putting people in a room, especially if those rooms are not all in the same place.
15:33.257 --> 15:41.142
[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, you look at the frontline workforce, the vast majority of structured learning activity takes place, shoulder to shoulder with a peer or a manager and it's hands-on job training.
15:41.702 --> 15:44.964
[SPEAKER_01]: a conversation, we just don't have a whole bunch anymore.
15:45.525 --> 15:54.311
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of the things, if you make a work in the front line, where time is restricted, people in corporate roles, also don't have a lot of time, right, overloaded, all types of stuff.
15:54.571 --> 15:58.775
[SPEAKER_01]: But most corporate employees can maybe decline that meeting.
15:59.515 --> 16:00.636
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of people are salaryed.
16:00.756 --> 16:12.043
[SPEAKER_01]: So they can decide, you know, I'm going to stay late today or over the weekend I'm going to, which are things that most frontline workers, at least in certain parts of the world, just can't make those decisions.
16:12.704 --> 16:17.567
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we often cut off their access to information as soon as they're clocked out for the day, right?
16:17.587 --> 16:18.687
[SPEAKER_01]: Because rules.
16:19.308 --> 16:25.852
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's the cool thing is that if we have more conversations that are not necessarily focused on frontline industrial
16:27.740 --> 16:32.606
[SPEAKER_01]: of frontline and deskless workers, it works for everybody in a lot of cases.
16:32.646 --> 16:38.894
[SPEAKER_01]: We just rotate in the direction of people who sit at a desk and do their job the way I do my job.
16:39.635 --> 16:43.820
[SPEAKER_01]: And forget, oh yes, 80% of the world doesn't do that.
16:44.228 --> 17:00.237
[SPEAKER_02]: where you brought up the sort of asynchronous side, the emphasis on these e-learning modules that can kind of be consumed on your own at whatever point or even if they're shorter than what, I guess maybe the typical module of this, even if it's that three minute thing, it's still kind of on your own doing it yourself.
17:01.117 --> 17:06.360
[SPEAKER_02]: But I know that you see the value of social learning, the peer learning as you were saying there.
17:06.380 --> 17:09.582
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess, you know, talk a little bit about,
17:10.522 --> 17:11.463
[SPEAKER_02]: how could that happen?
17:11.523 --> 17:26.435
[SPEAKER_02]: Because like you're saying, those place-based events where you bring people together for the sharing, very valuable, also very hard, depending on the individuals you're trying to bring together, to get them there, to have that time out of the office, to be able to afford, bringing those sorts of people together.
17:26.515 --> 17:29.197
[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you see that's working?
17:29.998 --> 17:35.783
[SPEAKER_02]: Perhaps to connect some of these frontline workers with other peers, socially, so that some of that transfer you're
17:37.744 --> 17:38.805
[SPEAKER_01]: couple of different things I've seen.
17:39.205 --> 17:53.314
[SPEAKER_01]: One is thinking about cohorts differently, because a lot of people are moving through the same motion or trying to develop the same set of skills or move forward in the similar way, but they don't see one another and they're distributed in particular ways.
17:53.695 --> 17:59.919
[SPEAKER_01]: On boardings and easy example, you know, there are a lot of people being on boarder right now in the same company in different locations and never see one another.
18:00.735 --> 18:14.131
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a way that we can leverage technology to put people into a virtual cohort where they feel comfortable talking to people who are more like them and asking them questions this solves a problem that I see on the internet because for some reason there are a lot of frontline workers asking questions on red it.
18:15.112 --> 18:20.438
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're in the subreddit of their company asking very tactical job questions where I sit there wonder.
18:21.550 --> 18:23.170
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's the trainer and or manager?
18:23.471 --> 18:24.911
[SPEAKER_01]: Because these are easy.
18:25.491 --> 18:27.192
[SPEAKER_01]: These shouldn't have turned the internet for this.
18:27.272 --> 18:28.832
[SPEAKER_01]: And are you trusting Reddit?
18:29.592 --> 18:30.112
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't.
18:30.533 --> 18:35.054
[SPEAKER_01]: But in a lot of cases, people are giving good information because it's a peer group that understands.
18:35.654 --> 18:39.775
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's usually, you know, Reddit is necessarily reflective of the entire employee experience.
18:40.135 --> 18:46.357
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a lot of people are very loud and have opinions and you start to see trends when you pay attention to the things they talk about.
18:46.877 --> 18:49.278
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are examples in my book from those types of conversations.
18:49.759 --> 19:00.824
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think there are ways to look at cohorts differently, even from a virtual perspective, just even just a chat group on an employee communication application that might put people into a group to say, hey, you all are on board at the same time.
19:01.564 --> 19:08.628
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're running into situations and you can't get to your manager, your trainer doesn't know what they're doing, you can talk about and share your experience.
19:08.648 --> 19:10.949
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it prompts people to say like, that was the first day.
19:11.489 --> 19:13.652
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what are you still not thinking about?
19:13.932 --> 19:15.554
[SPEAKER_01]: So people know that they're not in this alone.
19:16.034 --> 19:18.437
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not the only person onboarding in this company right now.
19:18.657 --> 19:21.381
[SPEAKER_01]: They might just be the only person onboarding in this location or on this ship.
19:22.322 --> 19:29.650
[SPEAKER_01]: Another thing that company I worked with that works in the airport lounge space, one of their priorities was making their big company feel small.
19:30.558 --> 19:41.080
[SPEAKER_01]: So they always look for ways to connect people through social tools, so that they could learn from one another, but also experience different activities with one another.
19:41.120 --> 19:44.581
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was less about kind of social media type activities.
19:44.601 --> 19:51.883
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we over rotate and thinking people will act at work like they act on Instagram when they're nowhere near as interested.
19:52.423 --> 19:56.067
[SPEAKER_01]: and what they're doing every day, nor willing to be like, let's take photos of everything.
19:56.367 --> 20:05.756
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you prompt people in certain directions and you recognize people for certain types of sharing, people are more likely to engage, not everybody, but some people will engage, and that's an element of the story.
20:06.557 --> 20:12.123
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's one other thing I'm trying to remember what it was that I had an idea, that connection of people.
20:12.755 --> 20:16.677
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, an example from another organization I worked with in the retail space.
20:16.877 --> 20:26.802
[SPEAKER_01]: So this person was trying to figure out how to improve product knowledge across a network of retail stores, and they don't come from a training background.
20:27.483 --> 20:29.524
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but they do come from a media background.
20:29.964 --> 20:40.630
[SPEAKER_01]: So instead of building e-learning, or any of that kind of traditional solution, they just went to a store with their phone and recorded a conversation they had with an employee about a particular product.
20:41.290 --> 20:55.226
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's that idea, you wouldn't necessarily look at that and think it's a social activity, but it featured people who look like me, who do the job that I do, talking about how they have conversations about certain products or solve certain problems in the same environment.
20:55.306 --> 21:00.532
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think we make a mistake in assuming that people who do this job every day are going to react to either...
21:01.233 --> 21:07.016
[SPEAKER_01]: content that content that doesn't reflect their reality or content that's coming from corporate or the executive team.
21:07.356 --> 21:12.498
[SPEAKER_01]: When a lot of places people want to see people like them, so it may be someone from my company, maybe just someone who does my job.
21:12.998 --> 21:18.121
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're a mechanic and I'm a mechanic, we just reflect differently.
21:18.561 --> 21:22.663
[SPEAKER_01]: Another company I was talking to the other day does they sell content for people who do roofing.
21:23.323 --> 21:28.510
[SPEAKER_01]: and their videos are kind of low production videos of people on a roof.
21:28.971 --> 21:32.796
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a guy who clearly does this job talking about how he does particular things.
21:33.197 --> 21:39.345
[SPEAKER_01]: So reflecting the world in which these people work and leveraging people who have credibility,
21:40.161 --> 21:42.283
[SPEAKER_01]: in their willingness to share what they're doing.
21:42.583 --> 21:46.887
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we can have a whole conversation about the effect of use of AI avatars in this story.
21:47.227 --> 21:52.252
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, Todd's example from product videos is in my book.
21:52.652 --> 21:57.957
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also the reason why this is the only book about frontline performance that will ever include a deer urine story.
21:59.190 --> 22:01.453
[SPEAKER_01]: He works in a retail store that sells deer urine.
22:01.994 --> 22:05.599
[SPEAKER_01]: So he shot a video about deer urine and then wacky things happen.
22:05.959 --> 22:07.361
[SPEAKER_01]: In that video, but guess what?
22:07.602 --> 22:10.486
[SPEAKER_01]: After the video gets released, they sold more deer urine, and that's the point.
22:16.675 --> 22:25.082
[SPEAKER_02]: You brought up AI avatars, so I think I'm going to ask you about just the use of AI among frontline workers.
22:25.102 --> 22:28.866
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you brought up like Reddit, you know, those people turning there.
22:29.246 --> 22:32.229
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, to what extent do you see AI as a
22:34.991 --> 22:48.875
[SPEAKER_02]: threat, uh, tool, uh, you know, how do you sort of view it because there can be workers just turning directly to, you know, whatever they might have access to on their own phone or, or if they do have access to a computer, just, you know, that way.
22:50.436 --> 22:53.477
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for online workers have been looking up stuff on the internet on their own devices forever.
22:53.897 --> 22:56.498
[SPEAKER_01]: So none of this is still, whether it's approved or not.
22:58.140 --> 23:09.105
[SPEAKER_01]: My research, as well as my experience around the use of AI in frontline teams, one has to be informed by the fact that, again, we leave frontline workers out of conversations around the future of work.
23:09.565 --> 23:23.692
[SPEAKER_01]: Constantly, the remote and hybrid work conversations are a great example where the vast majority of workers have no option, and at no point did we include, because the hybrid remote work conversations ultimately a conversation about workplace flexibility.
23:24.152 --> 23:27.413
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you can have a conversation about workplace flexibility with frontline workers, too.
23:27.813 --> 23:31.555
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's more about scheduling practices and making it easy to trade shifts.
23:31.675 --> 23:44.720
[SPEAKER_01]: And that type of stuff where there is a role for technology to play to make all of that more seamless because today, you should not require a manager to be less busy to figure out if you can adjust your schedule.
23:44.760 --> 23:46.261
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we should have figured this one out by now.
23:46.861 --> 23:50.883
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a whole future work conversation that's missing from the frontline workforce.
23:51.623 --> 24:09.112
[SPEAKER_01]: and that includes the broader conversation on AI, where I'm excited about what the tech can do now for front-line workers and I doesn't have anything to do with the word agentic, but when you talk about AI in the front-line workforce, it's a combination of how tools are used and how people are impacted in a very specific way.
24:09.692 --> 24:15.718
[SPEAKER_01]: I find frontline workers are way less concerned about this because I think there's a level of stability in frontline work.
24:15.838 --> 24:23.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of people do these jobs understand the value that they provide and the automation conversations have been impacting them for decades at this point.
24:23.870 --> 24:27.333
[SPEAKER_01]: because companies are finding ways to reduce labor hours.
24:27.693 --> 24:33.578
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a constant trouble to be able just to get my hours to get the paycheck I need if you work in these jobs in a lot of cases.
24:33.878 --> 24:34.759
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's not new.
24:35.160 --> 24:36.220
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the nature of this work.
24:36.301 --> 24:39.703
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot newer on the corporate side of the conversation right now.
24:40.504 --> 24:46.690
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you look at existing technology capabilities, inclusive of AI, there's certain things there.
24:47.351 --> 24:51.575
[SPEAKER_01]: Simple example, access the information and just be able to ask a question and get an answer back.
24:52.115 --> 25:03.146
[SPEAKER_01]: Huge when it comes to these jobs, because how often you just relying on the person next to you to be able to answer whatever question a customer comes in with, and customers come in with way more information than they used to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of them.
25:04.247 --> 25:10.911
[SPEAKER_01]: When I buy a car, I know more about the car than the person selling me the car because I'm doing a ridiculous amount of research and then coming into the conversation informed.
25:11.451 --> 25:24.078
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is true in retail, it's true in hotel environments in terms of the services available this hotel restaurants in terms of the ingredients and the food like people just know things and therefore have a higher expectation of what the employees know and are able to do.
25:24.578 --> 25:33.381
[SPEAKER_01]: So having information at your disposal where if you just started yesterday, you've been here for 30 years, we can level out that knowledge base a little bit more.
25:33.821 --> 25:38.162
[SPEAKER_01]: The translation piece of things is huge for frontline workers.
25:38.182 --> 25:48.285
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that we are going from a world where when I was developing training in a corporate environment, we had to pick, because translation was a time consuming and expensive problem.
25:48.866 --> 25:49.026
[SPEAKER_01]: So
25:50.126 --> 26:01.049
[SPEAKER_01]: We may be translated information to 3 to 4 languages, the most commonly spoken languages in our environment, not knowing who did we just leave behind because they just need information communicated differently.
26:01.109 --> 26:07.031
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I was in tech, one of my favorite things to do was to pull language information from the customer base.
26:07.391 --> 26:09.232
[SPEAKER_01]: And just to see who was using
26:10.072 --> 26:11.612
[SPEAKER_01]: our tools in what languages.
26:11.952 --> 26:19.994
[SPEAKER_01]: And I loved finding a company where there was one employee in one region of the world who was picking one particular language.
26:20.414 --> 26:30.657
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that was the whole point, right, is that that one person now has a chance, where in the past they spent a lot of time potentially just understanding information yet alone learning or applying anything.
26:30.677 --> 26:37.939
[SPEAKER_01]: So translation in all forms, while not perfect by any means, AI is still largely written in English in terms of
26:40.159 --> 26:45.724
[SPEAKER_01]: we can do more to the point where when I present in different languages, I translate all of my own stuff.
26:46.144 --> 26:52.630
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm usually near to perfect, but I always have someone who's at expertise in that language review.
26:52.990 --> 27:01.198
[SPEAKER_01]: The information for me when it's important, but just kind of like social exchanges, basic communication stuff, we can translate that in a large number of languages now.
27:02.678 --> 27:03.819
[SPEAKER_01]: as well as we need to be able to.
27:04.700 --> 27:16.047
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the one layer deeper I already kind of mentioned this is the fact that regardless of what the job description says, you have a lot of people who are doing these jobs who are not great readers for different reasons.
27:16.507 --> 27:23.972
[SPEAKER_01]: So a fact that we can now use language differently and people can talk to and engage with information and get the information to come back to them.
27:25.279 --> 27:26.020
[SPEAKER_01]: That's meaningful.
27:26.702 --> 27:33.134
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, in a way that we tend not to have to think about an corporate environment, there's obviously accessibility considerations in all of that, that kind of side of it.
27:33.214 --> 27:33.414
[SPEAKER_01]: But...
27:34.557 --> 27:46.419
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just the fact that maybe before, okay, I put a mobile device in your hand and it can translate the information great, but what if you can't read or just can't read well, well now you can talk to the information and the information can talk back.
27:46.760 --> 28:02.763
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's it's things like that that could knock down or reduce some significant barriers in terms of people's ability to learn and perform on the job that are driven by AI that don't have to be complex workflow automations and and all that kind of stuff and the one of the thing out at is.
28:03.403 --> 28:10.865
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a key thing to consider around how AI's being used in ways that impact people that don't have anything to do with the tools they use in the job every day.
28:11.425 --> 28:15.326
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're using AI for hiring practices, you're using it for scheduling practices.
28:15.847 --> 28:27.170
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's in some way being the data and AI's being used to make or to inform decisions around promotion and training, we have to keep in mind that people need to know.
28:28.215 --> 28:33.937
[SPEAKER_01]: how that works, how tools are being used to influence their earning potential and their lives.
28:35.098 --> 28:44.882
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially because there are a lot of frontline environments where you absolutely have to make that information available because you're working in a unionized environment or you're working in a highly regulated environment or we're in Europe at all.
28:45.542 --> 28:49.604
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are distinct ways where technology and data influence
28:50.564 --> 28:57.728
[SPEAKER_01]: the job and the meaning and motivation behind the job that we have to make sure is clear, and it can't be a black box.
28:58.208 --> 29:00.989
[SPEAKER_01]: That managers can't explain why people are getting hours.
29:01.330 --> 29:03.311
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it has to be explicit.
29:04.131 --> 29:07.153
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people are very much not going to care about that story.
29:07.173 --> 29:10.795
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people are very much going to care and click the little question mark next to.
29:11.675 --> 29:13.997
[SPEAKER_01]: whatever information and want to understand.
29:14.478 --> 29:15.859
[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I getting recommended this training?
29:16.219 --> 29:18.542
[SPEAKER_01]: Or why am I being scheduled in a particular way?
29:18.582 --> 29:20.964
[SPEAKER_01]: Or why didn't I get recommended for promotion?
29:21.164 --> 29:24.868
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to be able to answer those questions based on why people do this work.
29:31.555 --> 29:49.066
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've been talking a lot about the importance of reaching workers on the job in their actual workflow and that's a real goal that has real benefits of being able to do that associations and other learning businesses obviously have a hurdle that those internal L&D teams don't.
29:49.486 --> 29:55.529
[SPEAKER_02]: They can't as readily reach those individuals, those frontline employees as directly as easily.
29:56.670 --> 30:06.933
[SPEAKER_02]: They might be selling to the employer and then their access to that worker is kind of limited to or mediated through the employer or potentially managers.
30:07.673 --> 30:14.616
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that this kind of proximity issue exists in other contexts too, like franchises in some of those other contexts.
30:14.676 --> 30:20.778
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would just love to hear a little bit about how you might solve for that kind of distance issue or at least
30:26.219 --> 30:31.600
[SPEAKER_01]: the motivating factor for the buyer, the manager and the employee only to make sense based on what they care about.
30:33.021 --> 30:35.621
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer to all of those is not learning.
30:36.881 --> 30:45.603
[SPEAKER_01]: Because fundamentally, no one in the operation side of a business from the employee through the entire hierarchy, fundamentally cares about the concept of learning.
30:45.963 --> 30:52.205
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't use the word learning very much at all for the past 10 years, despite the fact that I've been an employee enablement to performance the whole time.
30:52.905 --> 31:09.270
[SPEAKER_01]: However, I talked about things like confidence and capability and safety and risk and those factors and I think it's critical that whatever the solution is, it has to check the box in terms of something I care about for the person who's making the decision to bring into the organization.
31:09.330 --> 31:13.932
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I'm if you're selling to the VP of operations or the CLO or whoever it might be.
31:14.572 --> 31:18.994
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I care about, like care about growing the business and outcomes associated to that?
31:19.154 --> 31:22.636
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, how is this solution going to help me and the answer is never learning?
31:23.376 --> 31:26.178
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something about the capability of writing it.
31:26.238 --> 31:30.620
[SPEAKER_01]: I love using the term readiness around operations teams because they understand.
31:31.340 --> 31:32.521
[SPEAKER_01]: that we need to be ready, right?
31:32.561 --> 31:33.421
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we do need to be ready.
31:33.441 --> 31:34.302
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it take to be ready?
31:34.722 --> 31:39.346
[SPEAKER_01]: And knowledge and skill and capability are all underneath that, but it's not the headline.
31:39.486 --> 31:40.787
[SPEAKER_01]: It's supporting capabilities.
31:41.247 --> 31:44.689
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you drop it down to the management team because the management team owns the day.
31:45.470 --> 31:49.532
[SPEAKER_01]: They're actually your most important stakeholder because if you don't have them, you have nothing.
31:49.813 --> 31:51.994
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to franchise operations, it's an example.
31:52.034 --> 31:53.275
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, corporate may love it.
31:53.295 --> 31:55.637
[SPEAKER_01]: The franchise, you may love it, but once you hit the restaurant,
31:56.237 --> 32:04.780
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, the shift manager has something to do and they have a limit number of people to do it and they're facing off against the customers and the food inspectors here and all of that type of stuff.
32:04.800 --> 32:15.303
[SPEAKER_01]: So how is what you're providing going to help me manager hit what I need to hit because usually managers make decisions based on two criteria one what's going to get me a phone call.
32:16.255 --> 32:19.836
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do whatever takes nothing to the phone call and to how I'm bonus.
32:20.376 --> 32:27.498
[SPEAKER_01]: So the metrics that impact my compensation and the things I'm held accountable for by my boss, how does this help me with those things?
32:27.938 --> 32:31.719
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to earn the time and access that you need to be able to reach.
32:32.379 --> 32:35.560
[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, all the managers should be included in the solution as well as the employee.
32:36.385 --> 32:47.397
[SPEAKER_02]: If you were to point to something that you hope listeners take away from our conversation today, what would you most like them to remember or to think about after hearing this?
32:48.848 --> 32:57.594
[SPEAKER_01]: Managers, the most important people in the workplace so if you invest in anything, when it comes to enabling frontline teams, look straight at the managers because of how much they influence the experience.
32:58.175 --> 33:12.405
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more that you understand how the job gets done and the workflow, the more likely you are to be able to shape a solution that people will actually use, actually get value from, and you'll actually be able to retain that organization, that customer base.
33:12.785 --> 33:14.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause so often things sound like a great idea.
33:16.015 --> 33:18.817
[SPEAKER_01]: the buyer leans in because it's trendy, it's AI, right?
33:20.038 --> 33:21.579
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you slam into reality.
33:22.299 --> 33:33.066
[SPEAKER_01]: And people aren't motivated to take advantage of solution, don't have time to take advantage of it, and then you have a really short relationship with that stakeholder or that buyer and that organization.
33:33.166 --> 33:41.472
[SPEAKER_01]: So the, you know, being a person who came from the technology space for the last 10 years, what I think made me effective was that I did the homework.
33:42.425 --> 33:44.006
[SPEAKER_01]: And I spend a lot of time in grocery stores.
33:44.626 --> 33:50.408
[SPEAKER_01]: And I not only understood how a grocery store works, but I understand what the owner of a grocery store very much cares about.
33:51.088 --> 33:56.010
[SPEAKER_01]: And one particular gentleman said something to me that is in the book, and it echoes in the back of my head.
33:56.030 --> 34:02.192
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the fact that I come from frontline operations means I don't just think about ideas and principles and practices.
34:02.232 --> 34:03.072
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking about people.
34:03.853 --> 34:05.834
[SPEAKER_01]: when I make decisions or when I make recommendations.
34:05.874 --> 34:14.359
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's the experience I had with these individuals and what I learned from them that I'm pulling together to shape a method and a framework and practice.
34:14.379 --> 34:19.102
[SPEAKER_01]: And this one individual who runs a set of grocery stores said to me, JD, I'm not changing for you.
34:19.802 --> 34:21.343
[SPEAKER_01]: I want Spandex, not concrete.
34:22.610 --> 34:28.292
[SPEAKER_01]: I, he needed a solution that wrapped around how he runs his business because he's not going to change his business for what I can do.
34:28.632 --> 34:30.553
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an expert in human performance.
34:30.833 --> 34:32.274
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an expert in the grocery business.
34:32.674 --> 34:48.460
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have to meet him where he is and the more he can do that, especially if you specialize in an industry like go back to the automotive mechanic space, if you specialize in automotive, you need to know automotive, not just sell to automotive because, again, people who run these businesses and own these businesses, this is what they do.
34:50.067 --> 34:50.707
[SPEAKER_01]: It's serious.
34:51.028 --> 35:00.857
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had so many conversations with grocery store owners about loss prevention and waste and cheese For some reason whenever I visit a grocery store people want to show me the cheese case
35:02.909 --> 35:04.089
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd want to see the cheesecake.
35:04.229 --> 35:05.970
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a higher margin product, right?
35:06.090 --> 35:10.491
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they'll also walk me through the spoilage process in terms of produce, right?
35:10.511 --> 35:12.892
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they want to talk about the, you know, they try to sell the pepper.
35:13.412 --> 35:16.253
[SPEAKER_01]: And if the pepper doesn't sell, they slice up the pepper and they put it in packaging.
35:16.273 --> 35:17.853
[SPEAKER_01]: So they sell you three sliced peppers.
35:18.173 --> 35:20.794
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't buy it by the sell-by date, in that case, then slice it up more.
35:20.994 --> 35:21.894
[SPEAKER_01]: They put it in a salad.
35:21.914 --> 35:24.575
[SPEAKER_01]: So they try to sell you the fully made food product.
35:24.835 --> 35:27.876
[SPEAKER_01]: If that doesn't sell, well, then we have a waste situations to do and everything they can.
35:28.076 --> 35:28.956
[SPEAKER_01]: So they need the employees,
35:29.756 --> 35:35.522
[SPEAKER_01]: to understand that because a waste prevention spoilage made your cost for a low margin business.
35:35.542 --> 35:37.464
[SPEAKER_01]: So they definitely want you to understand those things.
35:37.484 --> 35:42.389
[SPEAKER_01]: So do you understand for whatever business that you support or that you're selling products or services to?
35:42.769 --> 35:45.112
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you understand their version of that?
35:45.152 --> 35:47.554
[SPEAKER_01]: So they can go in and you can have a conversation.
35:47.794 --> 35:51.859
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I go to a manufacturing facility and the VP of safety is sitting there.
35:52.419 --> 36:04.491
[SPEAKER_01]: I am absolutely not saying the worth learning in this meeting, but I'm going to say is an important to you as the Vice President of Safety to have a capable confident team that's ready to make the right decision to the right time, to keep the line moving, to keep people safe.
36:04.971 --> 36:07.674
[SPEAKER_01]: I know the person on the other side of the desk is going to say that is absolutely important.
36:08.249 --> 36:10.352
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're going to talk about how we're going to be able to get there.
36:10.432 --> 36:23.688
[SPEAKER_01]: So do the homework and understand and appreciate and respect the work that is done by these folks every day so that you can provide a solution that that makes a clear that you're contributing to their industry and their business.
36:23.708 --> 36:24.750
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not just trying to sell them stuff.
36:31.860 --> 36:33.681
[SPEAKER_00]: That wraps up the conversation with J.D.
36:33.701 --> 36:36.623
[SPEAKER_00]: Dylan, author of The Frontline Enablement Playbook.
36:37.103 --> 36:38.363
[SPEAKER_00]: Stay with us for our recap.
36:38.704 --> 36:49.449
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll find show notes in a transcript for this episode at leadinglearning.com slash episode 4-8-7, along with links to where you can learn more about The Frontline Enablement Playbook and about J.D.'
36:49.429 --> 36:50.310
[SPEAKER_02]: 's work in general.
36:50.770 --> 36:56.093
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you found this episode valuable, we would be grateful if you'd share it so more people can find the show.
36:56.853 --> 37:02.819
[SPEAKER_00]: One point JD makes is that courses and events alone aren't effective for frontline workers.
37:02.859 --> 37:04.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Their jobs simply don't allow for it.
37:05.481 --> 37:18.053
[SPEAKER_00]: He points learning businesses instead toward reliable access to information, connecting workers with peers who can show them how it's really done and short frequent practice that fits in to the gaps and a shift.
37:18.753 --> 37:24.719
[SPEAKER_00]: and he argues that what works for frontline learners tends to transfer to people who sit at a desk.
37:25.139 --> 37:32.726
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if frontline and deskless workers aren't who your learning business serves, there's likely something here worth borrowing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when it comes to reaching the frontline workforce, JD's advice is to design for the buyer, the manager, and the employee with a particular focus on the manager since they own the day-to-day experience.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening and see you next time on the LeadingLearning podcast.
