Firstline Workers

Firstline Workers: Involve your employees in communication!

In today's world, it is more important than ever that all employees benefit from digital collaboration tools. Service and production employees in particular are often "forgotten" in digitalization processes - which is why they are also known as the "forgotten workers".

"Firstline worker", "blue collar worker" or "frontline worker" - there are many terms for the colleagues who work on the frontline and represent the company to the outside world, often with direct customer contact. They work in stores, restaurants, on public transport or at a service point. More than two billion people worldwide belong to this group. Without them, passengers cannot get their luggage, patients wait for their doctor, guests wait for their drink, online shoppers wait for their order and elderly ladies in retirement homes wait for care staff.

Firsline workers form the heart and lifeblood and are part of the core processes of many companies, yet they have often been neglected in digitization measures to date.

Promoting employee engagement and empowering first-line employees with Microsoft Teams

Using Ikea as an example, it's inspiring to see how industry leaders like IKEA are increasing employee engagement and improving the customer experience by putting tools like Microsoft Teams in the hands of their firstline employees. IKEA is connecting everyone in the company with familiar features like chat and video calls and digitizing firstline processes like shift management to save time and costs.

Direct contact with the customer or patient

How satisfied your customers are depends on these employees. Firstline workers are usually in direct contact with customers and represent your company to the outside world.

Firstline workers are team players

Empower your employees with Microsoft 365 tools for digital collaboration.

Make up the largest part of the workforce with 60%

Your firstline workers are the heart and lifeblood of your company and work effectively on your core processes.

Challenges for your firstline employees in everyday life

Customer service

Quick and helpful information procurement and a fast exchange between the specialist departments is crucial for the quality of customer service. The customer is king - but he only feels that way if the service is right. Hardware and software play a decisive role in customer service for the efficiency and satisfaction of employees.

Service staff

Service employees find out about new products and security guidelines on a daily basis and usually work on several projects at the same time. Consultation with experts leads to greater effectiveness and saves time. These employees benefit enormously from "digital" tools to communicate effectively and collaborate better.

Medical staff

Medical staff fight for their patients on the front line - and in shifts. The time-consuming planning of shift schedules is a real challenge in everyday life and this time is lacking where it is needed most - with patients.

Sales employee

Employees in sales or field service are the "fist point of contact" to your customers. Accessing the latest product information or sending status updates - all of this should work reliably. All too often, however, the right software is not available for these tasks. Insecure chat apps are used for communication. This creates security and compliance risks.