Why frontline workers are ‘leaving in droves’ (Hint: It’s pay)

Maybe this has happened to you. You’re at an all-hands meeting and the boss can’t contain his excitement about the executive team going to an offsite to come up with a new mission statement. Or managers in departments that have nothing to do with yours are giving PowerPoints about the minutiae of their team’s goals. And all along you’re thinking: Why can’t they focus instead on raising our salaries to at least keep up with inflation?

That incongruity between what management thinks motivates workers and what indeed does is tackled in a new report by Beekeeper, a mobile-based platform that helps workers communicate and collaborate with their teams.

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho…The Global Frontline Workforce Pulse Report is drawn from a September 2023 survey of 5,615 frontline workers, 2,318 managers, and 210 executives in head offices. Roughly half of the respondents were from North America, and the other half were from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Along with retail, the report covers industries including—this gets slashy—bars/restaurants, hotels/resorts, manufacturing, healthcare, and construction.

“Disengaged Frontliners are leaving in droves,” the report stated:

• In the previous 12 months, 29% of retail workers reported changing jobs, which was the lowest attrition rate among the sectors covered in the survey.
• The worst attrition rate was among restaurant/bar employees, with 57% reporting they’d changed jobs in the last 12 months, followed by hotel/resort/casino employees (53%), and manufacturing (40%).

Money (That’s What I Want): The most common reason frontline employees left their last job was—you’ll never guess—for better pay (38%), work/life balance issues (34%), and better prospects (24%).

“We need better remuneration, improved leadership and more room for personal development,” an unnamed frontline retail worker explained in the report.

Asked to list their three top stressors on the job, workers said the first was the combination of low wage growth and high inflation, the second was understaffed shifts, and the third was workplace safety. Managers were asked what they expected workers would say about what was most stressful, and they guessed pay would not be first but rather second, while understaffed shifts would be first. As for the third most stressful thing workers listed, workplace safety, managers expected them to rank that sixth.

Even more disparate was what workers listed as the biggest limits to productivity compared to what executives expected them to say. Workers said the first productivity killer was unstaffed shifts, but the head office expected the workers would rank that fifth; the second was lack of recognition, but the head office expected the workers to rank that sixth; and the third was poor cross-team communication, but the head office expected the workers to rank that fourth.

“Right now if I work full-time every week I still struggle to pay my bills and groceries,” a construction worker told the researchers. “Better pay equals happier employees which equals better work, more production, and encouragement to move forward within the company!”