Australian employers encouraged to empower managers in frontline workforce

Employers across Australia and New Zealand are being urged to empower their managers so they can address a wide range of challenges faced by the frontline workforce.

Dayforce surveyed nearly 7,000 workers, managers, and executives in eight countries, including Australia and New Zealand, to determine the state of frontline employees across the world. It found that frontline workers and managers are aligned, but there is a disconnect between them and executives.

In Australian and New Zealand, 97% of executives there said they understand the challenges facing frontline workers. However, only 73% of employees there agreed with this sentiment.

Justine Janssen, Chief Strategy Officer at Dayforce, said their findings indicate that people at all levels of a frontline-focused organisation experience varying levels of pain over growing complexity crisis.

"The key to closing the gap is empowering managers with the data, tools, and executive support needed to drive better decision making, increased efficiencies, lower turnover, and optimised performance," Janssen said in a statement.

"This can also help align senior leadership and workers by increasing visibility into the everyday reality of frontline workers and making their work lives better."

Empowering managers

To empower managers, Dayforce outlined a series of measures that organisations can utilise based on various areas of opportunities. The first one suggests providing managers leadership support to improve flexibility, as scheduling issues fuel turnover for workers (94%) and managers (89%).

Managers should also have information to make better compensation decisions to reduce turnover and improve recruitment as 72% of them don't feel very confident on the data they have to make competitive compensation decisions.

Organisations should also help their managers optimise their current workforce by prioritising internal mobility and personalised career paths, after the Dayforce survey revealed that 80% of workers want to progress in their organisation.

Taking advantage of technology was also recommended to make compliance easier and save managers time as 26% of them agreed than workforce compliance has become harder over the past two years.

Meanwhile, Dayforce also said it is critical for executives to engage and listen to employees to address the disconnect between them as well as minimise labour shortages.