Developing frontline talent: a vision for building an inclusive tech-enabled workforce
Explore the key learning and development trends, challenges and opportunities for deskless workers, plus discover tips for L&D practitioners, organisations, policymakers and founders
Around 80% of today’s workforce does not work in an office or at a desk, or have access to a computer. There are 2.7 billion frontline workers worldwide making up a majority of essential industries that support our economies and communities, from factory workers, supermarket employees, freight and delivery workers to agriculture, construction, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. But they are not getting a fair deal.
- Graduates are four times more likely to participate in job-related training than those with no qualifications
- 41% of frontline workers feel they don’t have opportunities for career development
- Only around 1% of enterprise technology spend goes to frontline workers
The risks of continuing to neglect frontline workers are massive.
- Six in 10 workers will require training before 2027 (but only half have access to adequate opportunities today)
- 1.2 billion employees worldwide will be affected by automation technologies over the coming decade
In collaboration with Coursera, based on extensive market research and interviews with industry experts, we’ve published a substantial report that examines the future of workforce development for frontline and deskless workers.
This report explores the urgent need to support frontline workers with learning and skills, to provide opportunities and pathways to development, and to create awareness so that workers can begin to take ownership of their own careers.
- What does the frontline workforce of the future look like?
- Where is technology accelerating change?
- What are the challenges and barriers to progress, and what do possible solutions look like?
Our report highlights exciting examples of impactful innovation from around the world, and offers practical recommendations for L&D practitioners, organisations, policymakers and edtech founders to overcome common barriers.
If you are…
… an L&D leader or organisation, you will understand the view of your peers on the journey ahead
… a policymaker, you will see our group’s recommendations
… a founder, you can review our market maps and understand how to position your product to meet rapidly-changing industry needs
“The story of frontline workers’ learning is the story of a group that has been forgotten, despite being essential to every economy. This report aims to rectify that — or at least to point towards a better way of doing things.”
Donald H. Taylor
The rapid shift to digital learning since Covid-19 has meant that frontline workers are being overlooked by sweeping technological transformation at their workplaces. On their feet or on the move throughout the day, frontline workers struggle to benefit from learning opportunities without dedicated space and time to learn, or access to the systems, processes and content that have been designed for office workers.
What does workforce development for frontline workers look like now?
Despite fundamental shifts in the skills needed to thrive in workplaces of the future, access to learning and training is highly unequal, with low paid, low qualified workers less likely to have opportunities to develop their skills.
Employer investment in learning and training fell sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, and many frontline workers who had their training reduced or moved online have not seen it recover. Yet companies regularly state skills gaps and talent availability as their greatest barriers to transformation, and perceive investing in training as the most promising workforce strategy alongside automation. So what’s going on?
Overall, a high proportion of training for frontline workers is basic induction, compliance or health and safety training. Smaller businesses and employers in lower wage, lower productivity sectors (such as retail and hospitality) are less likely to provide training — investment in training has fallen most in these sectors. Higher value, more knowledge intensive sectors have actually increased investment in training since the pandemic.
Driving the scale of change that is demanded by the rapidly changing nature of work will require a paradigm shift.
What will workforce development for frontline workers look like in the future?
Based on 30+ research interviews with CEOs, heads of L&D and edtech founders, plus a survey of sector experts, we have identified five key workforce development trends that require our attention in the coming decade:
- Onboarding
- Upskilling
- Compliance training / work processes
- Career development / reskilling
- Outskilling and outplacement
In our report, we take a deep dive into each of these areas — exploring challenges and opportunities, and using case studies to highlight inspirational early stage companies that are giving shape to the future of frontline workforce development.
Can these pockets of best practice scale up? It’s possible — but it requires action from policymakers and employers. The practical recommendations laid out are hard hitting, but set out the concrete next steps each of these groups needs to take.
“There’s a lot of hype around self-driven learning and learning culture. But if the goal is to actually build relevant skills, this cannot be done through one-way content consumption on a platform. It has to include application and practise … apprenticeships, mentoring, coaching and guidance. This is harder and more expensive to do. But turning on another LXP with a bunch of learning paths where you watch a series of videos is not going to cut it.”
Amanda Nolen, co-founder, NilesNolen
To explore key areas of growth in the frontline workforce development market in more detail and see recommendations for L&D, organisations, policymakers and founders, download the full report here.
The report includes:
- Case studies from four trailblazing organisations and edtech partners
- Insights around the challenges faced by organisations with large frontline workforces
- Practical recommendations for ways that employers, governments and tech companies can work together to accelerate opportunities for frontline workers
- Market maps for frontline workforce development
With special thanks to all members of the action group on foregrounding learning for frontline workers, led by Donald H Taylor and Tariq Chauhan, along with Coursera as the technical partner.
At Emerge, we are on the look-out for companies (existing and new) that will shape the future of learning for frontline workers over the coming decade.
If you are a founder building a business across any of these areas of frontline workforce development, we want to hear from you. Ultimately, we believe that these are the businesses that will play a critical role in solving the skills gap, and our mission is to invest in and support these entrepreneurs right from the early stage.
Emerge is a community-powered seed fund home to practical guidance for founders building the future of learning and work. Since 2014, we have invested in more than 80companies in the space, including Colossyan, FutureFit AI and Skills Trust.
Emerge Education welcomes inquiries from new investors and founders. For more information, visit emerge.education or email hello@emerge.education, and sign up for our newsletter here.
Thank you for reading… I would hugely appreciate some claps 👏 and shares 🙌 so that others can find it!
Nic
