Communication Breakdowns and AI Skepticism Undermine Frontline Workforce Stability.
Beekeeper, provider of the leading frontline success platform, released its 2025 Frontline Workforce Pulse Report, which surveyed over 7,000 individuals across frontline industries. The report sheds light on the persistent retention crisis, highlighting key issues such as job-hopping, AI skepticism, and the need for enhanced managerial support. The report also focused on how communication and digital tools can help businesses overcome these challenges.
“The challenges facing frontline worker retention won’t disappear on their own,” said Cristian Grossmann, Beekeeper CEO and co-founder. “While we’re seeing some early signs of improvement, there’s still a long way to go. Our latest findings highlight the critical need to rebuild trust, improve communication, and equip both workers and managers to navigate change together – especially as AI begins shaping the future of frontline work.” This year’s report indicates the only way to tackle this issue is to empower both workers and managers with the tools to communicate effectively and address problems in real time.
For its report, Beekeeper surveyed frontline workers, management, and HR/Head Office employees in several key frontline sectors, including manufacturing, hospitality, retail, healthcare, and construction. The result is a highly detailed picture of the challenges plaguing frontline work today.
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The Current Frontline Landscape: Poor Retention and Lagging AI Integration
In 2024, there was a slight improvement in retention, with job-hopping among frontline workers decreasing from 52% to 45% year-over-year. But the overall picture remains bleak. For instance, while the hospitality industry experienced a 7% YOY improvement in turnover, it still holds the highest turnover rate among frontline industries. The report makes clear that a combination of factors has contributed to this situation, including low pay, poor work-life balance, toxic workplace cultures, and limited opportunities for career advancement. Frontline workers are now perpetually on the lookout for the next job — and when they leave, they take invaluable workplace insights with them, further diminishing productivity.
These factors make life significantly more challenging for managers tasked with leading increasingly fragmented and disengaged teams. The report shows that keeping teams engaged, productive, and satisfied remains a top priority for managers — goals that many may find difficult to achieve. This issue goes beyond lack of communication with workers to an ongoing communication breakdown with company leadership: nearly a third of managers (29%) identify unclear priorities and insufficient resources from leadership as barriers to effectively managing their teams.
All this comes at a time when AI is rapidly transforming frontline workplace processes. Leadership knows that early AI adoption is crucial to future business success, but skepticism remains entrenched among both managers and workers. The numbers starkly illustrate this:
- 36% of employees don’t trust AI, 30% lack familiarity with key AI applications, and only 17% see the potential of AI to help with their jobs
- 23% of managers don’t trust AI, and 37% are uncertain about how AI can improve team performance
- Meanwhile, 97% of HR personnel and administrators trust AI
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Only 3% of leadership cite trust concerns surrounding AI; that number balloons to 23% among managers and 36% among employees. Managers, meanwhile, remain unclear on the technology’s basic applications, with 37% saying that they are uncertain how it can enhance team performance (and only 24% seeing potential for automating administrative tasks).
Businesses are falling behind on both basic business objectives and future-oriented AI integration. Rapid turnover and subsequent knowledge bleed harm daily functioning, while technology that could help solve these problems is being overlooked. Frontline work, which should be defined by optimism and productivity, is instead clouded by frustration and the feeling that change is out of reach.
The Way Forward: Mending Broken Lines of Communication
The 2025 Frontline Workforce Pulse Report outlines a clear path forward for businesses. Its actionable recommendations aim to reverse alarming turnover trends, increase engagement, and set businesses on the right course with AI integration.
As the report makes clear, a lack of adequate communication between all stakeholders — leadership, management, and workers — is at the heart of all of these problems. Both management and workers cite an inability to align on objectives and workplace concerns as a primary barrier to increased productivity.
The desire to communicate is there, and with the right technology, it can be unleashed. Processes like onboarding, shift allocation, and cross-team collaboration all present persistent challenges that can be radically simplified with next-generation workplace productivity technology. The same applies to the learning and development initiatives that are clearly so important to the health of modern frontline workplaces.
Beekeeper’s mobile-first platform puts these tools in the hands of every manager and every frontline worker. It empowers both parties, giving them the tools they need to work together towards shared goals. By simplifying and streamlining otherwise complex communication processes, it gives everyone a voice and helps ensure a bright future for frontline industries.
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Source: Businesswire
