Is Email Still Working? How to Communicate with Frontline Employees

It’s no secret that employee engagement is at an all-time low: 77 percent of the global workforce are disengaged, according to Gallup. This is a particular challenge on the frontlines, where employees are the most removed from corporate goals and directives. The costs of this disconnect are high and well-documented.

While many factors play a role in this growing trend, one particular obstacle stands out—especially for frontline workers. Let’s have a look at email, how it’s suppressing employee engagement, and what you can do about it.

The Costs of Disengagement

-18% profitability: The global cost of disengagement is $8.8 trillion annually, according to Gallup. Disengaged employees simply don’t contribute as much at work as their engaged counterparts.

+30% employee turnover: Employees not engaged with their work or the corporate mission have little reason to stick around, and are much more susceptible to burnout.

-15% sales productivity: Sales teams are particularly susceptible to productivity losses related to low engagement, creating a major bottleneck for corporate growth.

There are many causes of this growing disconnect, but one major choke point stands out: email. Let’s explore the challenges raised by email, and the alternatives that can generate immediate and powerful increases in frontline engagement.

The Problem with Email

Employee engagement and communication technology generally revolves around the needs and habits of office workers. This isn’t surprising, given that office or “knowledge” workers have a greater need to transmit information back and forth throughout the day. However, tools developed around this type of work, like email and chat apps, simply don’t fit into the frontline workday.

For one, email simply isn’t an effective way to communicate – period. According to a survey, 30 percent of employees ignore emails from their employers. Of the 70 percent who do open corporate emails, only 37 percent read those emails, and 24 percent click on any links or images.

This is due to the volume of emails most employees, desked and deskless alike, receive each day. Very few are directly relevant to an employee’s role or tasks, but all of them demand time and attention that few employees have to offer. Emails also distract from ongoing work, a lapse in focus that takes an average of 23 minutes to recover from.

This is exacerbated by the lack of technology on the frontlines—deskless workers are less likely to have corporate email accounts, corporate devices, or other sanctioned ways to receive and access emails. At the end of a day in a factory or retail store, workers are unlikely to spend their free time sifting through work emails to see if any are useful; they simply go unread.

To reconnect with frontline employees, we need to communicate better.

The Alternative to Email Communications

If email fails to engage frontline workers, what’s the alternative? At Igloo, we’ve found that the organizations that are most successful are those that implement a targeted, multichannel communications strategy using purpose-built tools.

This sounds like a lot of work, but it generally reduces workload for communications departments. Let’s see how using an intranet as a communications hub can increase employee engagement while decreasing the workload on communication teams.

How Igloo supports internal communications →

1. Role-Specific Tools

The key to reaching the frontlines (and even office workers) is to address them on the channels and tools that are the best fit for the job and technical proficiency of the users. It’s well established that email is not a good fit for frontline workers, but many organizations have success implementing app-based communications among deskless cohorts.

By leveraging an intranet that offers a purpose-built frontline app, information relevant to these employees can be separated from the bulk of resources, announcements, and communications that are only of use to specific office teams. For instance, the UI of Igloo’s Flex intranet is designed specifically with the limitations and priorities of frontline work in mind, simplifying the task of accessing, reviewing, and actioning information for busy workers in a hotel or jobsite.

AI tools like the Igloo Digital Assistant can offer a powerful channel for information and notifications relevant to frontline workers, consolidating important tasks and action items into a virtual assistant that can find pay stubs, check vacation balances, and approve requests on the user’s behalf.

Learn more about Igloo Digital Assistant →

Even in phone-free environments, tools like Digital Signage, a powerful add-on to Igloo’s intranet, can surface corporate updates, news, and priorities relevant to frontline teams in break rooms and other gathering points. With the right tools, it’s always possible to get information to the right people.

2. Personalized Communications

The next step is to ensure the information in these role-specific channels is equally personalized. Even among frontline teams, information needs vary. Ensuring that each team gets only the updates and resources relevant to their roles will also guarantee a higher rate of engagement as these workers learn to trust the integrity of information coming from the organization.

This helps drive a sense of connection not only with operational updates like policies and training, but also with mission-oriented communications. Learning that the web team just completed a major project milestone is not interesting or motivating to a warehouse team of a retail operation, but those frontline employees could be engaged by news that the reduced shipping time last month contributed to an increased customer satisfaction score.

When frontline employees have an easy way to access tailored communications, it’s easier to help them understand the critical impact they have on the organization’s high-level goals.

3. Centralized Communications Management

This new, personalized communications strategy doesn’t need to be difficult. The right intranet can be an easy way to define and manage your various communication channels and audiences, allowing for the rapid deployment of targeted content to the exact people and devices for maximum impact.

Other advancements in intranet technology accelerate this process further, such as the AI copywriting assistant built into Igloo’s digital workplace. This kind of support allows communications and HR teams to spin up deeply personalized content in an instant, scaling the communication strategy quickly without adding overhead or sacrificing quality.

Read: The AI Tech that will Shape 2025 →

Conclusion

Email still has its uses, and can be an effective way to get certain messages out to desked workers. However, the low readership of corporate emails combined with the continuing decline of employee engagement, especially on the frontlines, sends a clear message: we need a better approach to communications.

A modern intranet can be the one-stop shop for a modern, multichannel communication strategy that addresses every employee in a way that resonates, with information that reforges the connection between employee and employer.

Are you ready to re-engage your frontline workforce?