4 Practical Ways Your Frontline Employees Can Use Google Workspace Frontline Edition

Your essential retail workers are just that: essential. But without the right tools, they may not be set up for success. Google Workspace Frontline can help retail organizations better integrate and support their frontline teams, thanks to familiar, easy-to-use tools that bring Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Meet into the hands of these essential employees.

The Frontline edition of Google’s productivity suite supports key use cases on the frontlines of retail, from communication and collaboration, to scheduling, training, and improved workflows, helping improve productivity, customer service, and workforce retention. It also provides advanced security to ensure your retail organization is protected, even when frontline workers are using their own devices for work.

So how can Google Workspace Frontline actually help? Here are four ways:

Scheduling and task management

Scheduling is an ongoing challenge for retailers. Understaffing can lead to employee burnout, while overstaffing unnecessarily increases labor costs. Task management is also a challenge. If frontline workers don’t fully understand what’s expected of them, they may feel confused, frustrated, or demoralized, which could be reflected in the service they provide to customers.

Google Workspace can make scheduling a breeze with real-time insights into worker availability (and even preferences). For example, cloud-based tools like Calendar, Gmail, and Sheets allow managers and workers to update schedules and tasks in real-time. Frontline workers can easily set shift availability with shared schedules and working locations in Calendar, blocking off days or times when they’re not available. They could even swap shifts with co-workers in Chat.

Communication and engagement

While frontline retail workers may not need access to a full suite of productivity tools, they often lack even the most basic tools to do the job—including a corporate email address. Some retailers still use bulletin boards and paper-based schedules to communicate with frontline staff. But without the right tools, productivity can suffer, as well as customer service levels. In addition, these workers might feel disconnected from their co-workers, leading to higher turnover.

With Google Workspace Frontline edition, retail organizations can create an environment of collaboration and inclusivity while driving employee experience and engagement. For example, teams at a retail store or even a production line can communicate with Spaces in Chat; here, they can also share relevant files or assigned tasks. And with Meet, they can attend team meetings from the shop floor or a warehouse. Retailers can provide all this, while ensuring security and privacy through Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies that restrict what workers can share outside the organization. 

Onboarding and training

Many retail jobs have high turnover rates, but that isn’t going to change unless workers feel that they’re offered growth and training opportunities that can lead to career advancement opportunities. Poor onboarding and training also leaves them ill-equipped to handle the requirements of the job, which can negatively impact everything from productivity and safety to employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

With high turnover rates in the retail industry, taking the time to train and onboard new workers can be costly. But with Google Workspace Frontline coupled with Pythian’s Grow with Google, you can create an onboarding and ongoing learning package with the ability to deliver it via Google Workspace.  Plus, you can provide training materials and educational resources in a centralized location, so employees can access them whenever they need to. New employees can even use their personal devices for work, thanks to Google’s cloud-native, zero trust architecture as well as built-in identity, access, and endpoint management capabilities.

Better workflows

With simple, integrated workflows, frontline teams can ensure they cover off everything from their daily to-do list. And with Google apps working together, workers can easily jump from application to application, seamlessly. For example, Forms can be used to create checklists for a variety of purposes, from equipment inspection to quality control; these can be searched and referenced. Managers and workers can share documents in Google Docs, and Drive allows those managers to share and revoke access to those documents, with tracked changes, so there’s a secure digital paper trail stored in the cloud.

Need help getting started? 

We’re a Google Workspace managed service provider that has the skills and experience to help you and your teams get the most out of Google Workspace Frontline. If you’re looking to power up your frontline workers, get in touch and see how our team can help you get to value faster.