2.7 billion frontline workers: a vision of inclusive development
What would a vision for inclusive workforce development for deskless workers look like?
As we’ve outlined in our manifesto, the global labour deficit is projected to reach $8.5 trillion by 2030. We believe that one of the root causes behind this is the widening inequality of access to learning and training — 80% of workers worldwide do not sit at a desk and cannot access meaningful learning or skilling opportunities designed for office workers. Addressing these urgent unmet needs of the deskless workforce is the biggest challenge and opportunity to come along in decades. We’ll shortly be launching a report on this subject, based on extensive research and expert insights — here are some of our key findings so far.
At the end of this article, you will have gained:
- An overview of learning available to frontline workers today and where the workforce development market is heading.
- The emerging areas that will define the future of learning and training for frontline workers.
If you are an L&D/HR leader, you will take away:
- Insights into the next generation of learning tools that tackle unique challenges frontline workers face at each stage of their employee journey.
As a founder, what you will get out of this:
- Deep understanding of the challenges and blockers facing frontline workers and employers.
- A current market roundup to clarify what’s being done, profile key players and competitive developments, and identify the most exciting areas of opportunity.
- A vision for the next generation of learning tools that can make a difference at scale.
The world of work is changing at an unprecedented rate — 1.2 billion employees worldwide will be affected by automation technologies over the coming decade. The impact of this damage will be extremely disproportionate as 80% of workers facing job insecurity do not have a university degree. Yet only 30% of employees at risk of job displacement from technological changes received training in recent years, and those most at risk are often the ones who are least likely to receive any retraining at all. Higher education, vocational education and alternative providers all have an important role to play, but there are strong business imperatives for employers to step up too.
What’s the problem?
Around 80% of today’s workforce does not work in an office or at a desk, or even have access to a computer. We’re using ‘frontline’ and ‘deskless’ to describe those workers — 2.7 billion worldwide in 2018 — who make up a majority of essential industries that support both our economies and our communities, from factory workers, supermarket employees, freight and delivery workers to agriculture, construction, hospitality, retail and manufacturing.
While frontline roles in these sectors vary significantly, there are some things that they have in common:
- Perform role away from a desk
- Strong need for regulatory compliance or other workplace health & safety standards
- Use a range of equipment
- Tend to be hourly-paid shift work
- Do not hold a bachelor’s degree
The rapid shift to online learning since Covid-19 has meant that frontline workers are being overlooked by sweeping digital transformation at their workplaces. The growing popularity of remote and hybrid working has seen an explosion of new tools designed to support activities from productivity and project management to workflow automation and employee engagement. On their feet or on the move throughout the day, frontline workers can’t benefit from learning opportunities without space and time to learn, or access to the systems and content that have been designed for office workers. Frontline workers therefore also find it more difficult to develop the essential digital and soft skills they increasingly need as the nature of work changes. High turnover means there is little apparent incentive for employers to invest in solutions targeting frontline workers.
At the same time, knowledge workers looking to upskill or re-skill in order to move into future-proof (often high-income jobs, especially in tech) increasingly have access to a range of flexible innovative providers, such as bootcamps, as well as employer-funded learning facilitated by players such as Multiverse, The Academy and Patika. Leading industry certification platforms such as Udemy and Udacity reached unicorn status over the past decade, while large learning platforms such as Coursera, EdX and FutureLearn have expanded their industry certifications, but with average completion rates typically falling below 10%, these self-paced courses are only a route to development for the most highly motivated, confident learners — something we’ll see is the biggest barrier for frontline workers.
Frontline workers are caught in a vicious cycle of churn and neglect.
What’s the opportunity?
At least $240bn is spent per year on corporate training and the spend has been trending upwards. Of this spend, however, only a small proportion currently goes towards frontline workers. This means that the potential market is large with significant impetus for growth. Using population size as a proxy, deskless worker technology could be 4x the size of the current market, which is focused almost entirely on desked workers (20% of the population).
Estimates suggest that the market size for startups enabling learning for frontline workers will grow by a CAGR of 16.2% from $18.9 in 2022 to $40.1bn in 2027.
Here are a selection of the established and emerging players in this space:
The market is fairly fragmented, with many medium-sized players accounting for majority market revenue share.
The field is consolidating as incumbents realise that a small piece of the ecosystem (e.g. a standalone app or content solution) is not enough to generate genuine client impact. This means that, so far, strategic integration has been key to success:
- On 1 February 2022, eduMe, the market-leading mobile-based training platform for deskless workers, and Beekeeper, the leading mobile workforce collaboration platform, announced a full-scale integration. This signals a paradigm-shift in how frontline-majority companies have traditionally managed staff development and onboarding by introducing a suite of in-app, contextual training functions that employees can access instantly through the home screen widget with one click.
- On 7 March 2022, Go1, a well-known provider of online learning content and instruction, collaborated with WorkJam, the top digital workplace for businesses employing hourly and frontline workers. This collaboration takes advantage of WorkJam’s user interface to provide Go1’s large content library of e-learning materials to quickly distribute specialised content to joint customers.
- In June 2022, Axonify announced the acquisition of Nudge, the top-rated employee communication and execution platform.
- YOOBIC partnered with OpenSesame to support employees with in-the-workflow access to more than 25,000 digitally optimised training courses in critical areas.
We expect this market to grow rapidly over the coming decade for three main reasons.
Driver 1: Learner population growth
We anticipate the number of adult learners looking to upskill and reskill to grow rapidly in response to the widening skills gap, in order to avoid being pushed into under- or unemployment. By 2030, McKinsey estimates that more than 100m workers in developed economies will need to switch occupations, with almost half requiring more advanced skills. Covid-19 has only accelerated this as many sectors have experienced a digitisation jump forward by several years. The rise of ‘new collar’ jobs means we are now seeing the emergence of frontline roles that combine technical skills, digital skills and soft skills in new ways.
Driver 2: Urgent need for innovative solutions
Organisations are still overwhelmingly reliant on traditional learning platforms, such as Learning Management Systems (LMS), Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs) and external partnerships with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Our recent conversations with dozens of learning and development (L&D) leaders reveals a growing sense of urgency around the need for frontline workforce development and an awareness that current approaches do not adequately serve this constituency. Many companies are embarking on large-scale skills mapping exercises, but lack the performance management and talent marketplace solutions to unleash the vast potential of their existing workforce. Yet as digital transformation gathers pace, new solutions are emerging to meet the changing needs of frontline workers. While currently only around 1% of enterprise technology spend goes toward companies providing deskless worker technology, the category has recently begun to capture multiple waves of venture funding as it takes advantage of new platforms, such as drones and wearables. In the past five years, several dozen US-based startups with offerings dedicated to the deskless workforce have netted nearly $3.5 billion in funding. It is still early, but we may be reaching an inflection point.
Driver 3: This is a nascent market with vast potential for growth.
We believe that startups are the key to making change happen. Only 3 of the 19 education unicorns (private companies valued at $1bn+) operate in this space, 2 of which are fundamentally a conduit for academic-driven learning as a solution to corporate problems — and none target frontline workers.
At Emerge, we see plenty of white space in this market map — there is significant room for innovation and opportunities for new players.
What are the barriers to effective learning for frontline workers at scale?
Frontline workers face unique challenges and pressures.
A recent RSA/Ufi VocTech Trust report sheds light on the needs, motivations and barriers to learning for those furthest from traditional education provision. One quarter of adults surveyed (24%) do not identify as confident learning new things. Learner confidence is a product of self-identity as a capable learner, confidence in social supports to learn (e.g. peer or family support) and trust in learning institutions.
Situational barriers:
- Time constraints
- Family and/or other caring commitments
- Financial constraints
Institutional barriers:
- Lack of flexibility in educational offers, especially from traditional institutions (e.g. inappropriate scheduling or out-of-date content)
- Perceived poor prior experiences with formal education
Dispositional barriers
- Lack interest in learning
- Little sense that future opportunities hinge on learning
- Lack of relevant role models
The most effective triggers to participating in adult learning were socially driven, such as ‘recommendation from a friend’.
All this emphasises the need to rebalance the debate on frontline worker learning away from industrial skills, and towards wider participation and inclusion in learning.
Against this backdrop, traditional models of workforce development have failed to gain traction for frontline workers as a result of the following four barriers.
- Performance management: The cost of taking frontline workers off the floor/out of the field is significant — labour productivity metrics mean that learning too often looks like a cost to the business. For employers, most workforce development remains far removed from the gold standard of measuring business impact and return on investment (ROI). At best, investments here are made to improve staff retention, versus moving the needle on business outcomes.
- Content management: Many organisations rely on long in-person or blended training programs with detailed learning content, which is time-consuming, expensive and difficult to convert into microcontent. Moreover, force-fitting existing learning content into a microlearning solution is not pedagogically effective, which means redesigning microlearning-based learning from scratch. Engagement with social media means workers bring high levels of expectation around personalisation, customisation and user experience. Many frontline workers need work-related learning to be paired with foundational literacy, numeracy and/or digital skills, which is not seen as a corporate responsibility.
- Communication: 80% of frontline workers don’t have a work email which makes it difficult to nudge personalised learning or to provide consistent, up-to-date work processes and job-related information. Some work sites have no/limited internet access. Some frontline workers, especially in the global south, have no/limited internet access at home. ‘Bring your own device’ raises questions around ethics, data protection, cost and the ‘right to disconnect’.
- Talent management: L&D spend on frontline workers is disproportionately low. Solutions have been focused on core HR infrastructure and content, driven by administrative and regulatory compliance needs. At the same time, engagement among frontline workers is challenging because they typically have few and/or negative prior educational experiences and low self-actualisation levels with little sense that future opportunities hinge on learning. Employees still need to understand how they can upskill to move into higher paid, sustainable work. Organisations still need to understand how they can fill gaps from inside the organisation — but we all know it’s cheaper and more effective to promote from within than hire from without.
Here are where some of the established and up-and-coming players fit into this dynamic:
How to overcome these barriers
In recent years, a new crop of startups and scaleups have emerged with new and improved offerings that address these challenges. The key ingredients powering the success of these new models are:
- Performance management: Targeted microlearning makes learning at point of need and in the flow highly efficient, without interrupting workflow. Organisations are data-rich but time-poor, which means they are not generating meaningful insights from the learning and training they do provide, especially when it comes to capturing evidence around business value. There are now several large players in this space including eduMe, disprz and Axonify.
- Content management: Generative AI is a game-changer, enabling conversion of context-specific learning content at scale and easily improving access by offering learning in multiple languages including local dialects. There are a number of emerging players including Elephant Company, Flexudy and Sana.
- Communications: Mobile-first is now table stakes, as is incorporating learning into a holistic employee experience app for frictionless. Frontline workers are often operating in high-complexity and/or distracting environments, and don’t always have the time or motivation to navigate through a complex product. There are a number of established players in this space, including Beekeeper, Connecteam and Flip.
- Talent management: Digitally-enabled peer-to-peer mentorship and coaching are vital triggers to learning for this constituency. At the same time, large players such as Guild and CrossKnowledge are helping organisations to clean up their understanding of durable skills, and gateway and entry-level jobs that facilitate mobility.
We have identified four areas, each powered by technology, that can enable rapid transformation and significant impact.
Unlike traditional models of frontline workforce development, the emerging areas below utilise technology to directly address workforce enablement by seamlessly connecting frontline workers to learning opportunities in the flow of work, streamlining processes, and aggregating large datasets for real-time business impact analysis.
- Mobile-based learning apps → Holistic employee experience
- AR/VR training → Increasing engagement in scenario-based learning
- Workforce wearables → Frictionless learning in the flow
- Digital coaching and mentoring → Improving relevance and impact
These models offer frontline workers greater flexibility, durable skills and better outcomes.
Every quarter, Emerge and Donald H Taylor bring together a network of trailblazing leaders from large enterprises with founders of fast-growing tech companies solving the skills gap. This combination leads to a vibrant exchange of ideas, vigorous debate and an unprecedented level of future insight.
The Workforce Development Edtech Action Group will shortly publish a full report on this subject. This will take a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities for learning at each stage of the frontline worker employee journey, from onboarding to outplacement. We highlight exciting examples of innovation from around the world, and offer tips for L&D practitioners, organisations, policymakers and edtech founders to overcome common barriers. Watch this space.
At Emerge, we are on the look-out for the 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 workforce enablement, 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 60 companies in the space, including Colossyan, FutureFit AI and Zavvy.
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.
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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.
