How to succeed with frontline upskilling: Insights from Lingio CEO Yashar Moradbakhti

How to succeed with frontline upskilling: Insights from Lingio CEO Yashar Moradbakhti

Today, the vacancy rate is 8% in hospitality, 9.9% in social care, and 10% in bus driver transportation, compared to the overall vacancy rate of 3.4% in the UK. 

Industries reliant on deskless workers face soaring vacancy rates, critical skills shortages, and widening competence gaps. As such, employers must assume greater responsibility for talent acquisition and in-house skills development.

In a recent discussion with People Success Platform Eletive, I spoke on the vital topic of upskilling frontline workers from my perspective as CEO and co-founder of Lingio. I shared my insights on how to make employee training not just accessible but also fun and engaging. Keep reading to learn more about the discussion.

The importance of upskilling frontline workers 

Upskilling is essential for driving employee engagement and success, especially in frontline industries such as hospitality, retail, healthcare, and public transportation. Frontline workers are often the faces of organisations, directly interacting with customers and clients. Investing in their training isn’t just beneficial - it's essential for maintaining high operational standards and ensuring customer satisfaction. 

The challenges in frontline worker training 

One of the primary hurdles in training frontline workers is their limited access and time to complete traditional training, such as lengthy exams or attending in-person sessions. Many frontline workers lack desktop computers or company emails, complicating the delivery of conventional training programs. Furthermore, high turnover rates and low employee engagement exacerbate these challenges. 

Key takeaways 

In my talk, I highlight several key takeaways for organisations looking to improve their training strategies for frontline workers: 

• Prioritise mobile accessibility: Ensure employee training programs are accessible via mobile devices to reach all workers effectively. 
• Focus on engagement: Use gamification and interactive elements to make training enjoyable and engaging. 
• Offer on-demand learning: Provide bite-sized, flexible training sessions that can fit into workers' busy schedules. 
• Ensure inclusivity: Design training programs accessible to all workers, regardless of their language or technological proficiency.

Innovative training with Lingio

Lingio has developed innovative solutions to tackle the challenges of training frontline workers head-on, focusing on mobile-based training, on-demand accessibility, and gamification. 

Here are the key features of Lingio mentioned in the discussion for training frontline workers: 

• Mobile-based training: Recognising that most frontline workers have access to mobile phones, Lingio provides mobile-friendly training courses. This ensures that workers can access training materials anytime, anywhere.
• On-demand training: To fit the hectic schedules of frontline workers, Lingio offers short training courses that can be completed in a few minutes at a time. This flexibility allows workers to learn during their breaks or slower periods, minimising disruption to their work. 
• Gamification: To improve engagement, Lingio incorporates gamification into its training courses. By making learning fun and interactive, it encourages continuous training and skill development. Lingio users often spend three times more time learning at home compared to traditional methods. 
• Inclusive training: Lingio ensures that training courses are accessible to all workers. They support training in multiple languages and design courses to work on older mobile devices, ensuring that every worker is included. 

Success stories and statistics 

In the discussion, I shared several of Lingio’s success stories, including a notable example from Scandic Hotels. When facing recruitment challenges, Scandic invested in training their housekeeping staff with Lingio’s mobile-based courses, leading to their best financial year in 2023. This success story highlights the financial benefits of investing in employee training. 

Additionally, market research conducted by our team at Lingio revealed that 71% of HR and learning managers believe effective training positively impacts employee retention. However, only 50% feel they are delivering the right training for employees to fulfil their potential, highlighting a significant opportunity for improvement. 

By implementing the strategies mentioned, organisations can better equip their frontline workers with the skills they need to thrive, ultimately driving higher engagement, better performance, and improved operational efficiency. 

I share this quote by Richard Branson - "Train people well enough so they can leave, but treat them well enough so they don’t want to." This philosophy lies at the heart of Lingio's approach to training and development, paving the way for a more skilled and motivated workforce.

Listen to my full discussion with Eletive here.