Why Frontline Workers Must Be Part Of Your Digital Transformation

Whenever you and I deal with a business, we deal with frontline workers, B2C or B2B it is always front line people.

I remember being in the lobby of a very large Telco in Australia, our host came down to see us and as we were early, we had coffee together.

He went through the business issues of the company as it grappled with nimble competition, Government legislation and the move from analogue to a digital business. 

I asked our host what training was being used to get the business ready for the digital transformation that was coming.

He answered that the top 200 people had been put through a week long "digital transformation" course.

I asked what had changed since then?

He said, "nothing".

In fact from the usual "all hands calls" the employees felt totally inadequate to meet the challenges ahead.  They had been offered no training, in fact talking to the staff we presented to, they had gone around the backs of the management and had been training themselves.

A number of people come up to us in the break and whispered about the success they were having, but doubted the leadership understood the real issues and told us the leadership wouldn't do anything.  The inference was that the leadership, didn't know how to lead, or didn't want to "rock the boat".

The leadership, thanked us for our presentation and we never heard from them again.

Training "the management" isn't good enough.  I also read a story about "front line staff" that were trained and the management walked out as they didn't feel they needed to be trained.

Change is happening and we all have collective responsibility to our companies, both as leaders and individual contributors to work on the change together.

In my first book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers" I talk about the importance of change makers.

Digital transformation is for all of and it's time for all of us to grasp the nettle of change!