Frontline Managers Unlock Worker Voice

Frontline Managers: The Key to Worker Voice 

If you want to unlock worker voice, start with your frontline managers. 

Imagine you are Maria, a frontline manager who oversees a team of 18 associates at a busy retail store. On any given day, you are balancing new corporate directives, calming a frustrated customer, and coaching a first-time employee who’s on the verge of quitting. You are the bridge between corporate priorities and frontline realities—and you see problems and solutions before anyone else. 

Yet in most organizations, leaders like you are rarely given a seat at the table when strategies are being shaped. And that’s a missed opportunity because frontline managers hold the key to unlocking worker voice, which is often the difference between change initiatives that stall out and those that succeed. 

The Critical Role of Frontline Managers 

In times where change is constant, worker voice becomes more critical than ever. Today, organizations face rapid technological change and shifting worker expectations. Employees today want more than a paycheck—they expect to be heard, trusted, and engaged in shaping their workplaces. 

Employers are working to improve these strategies. However, despite introducing new technology platforms, surveys, and engagement initiatives into the workplace, many employers still struggle to drive measurable results. Why? Because too often, one of the most critical players in the workplace is overlooked: frontline managers.  

Frontline managers are critical to business success. Catalyst data shows an undeniable link between how managers treat employees and the quality of frontline team dynamics. Strong and positive team dynamics play a key role in impacting performance and emerge when companies and managers treat employees fairly, encourage them to use their voices, and support their needs.  

The data is clear. Gallup finds that “70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.” And the cost of poor leadership leading to turnover is steep. For example, it costs roughly 40% of a frontline worker’s salary to replace them.  

Frontline managers sit at the intersection of business goals and day-to-day worker experience. They often supervise the largest share of the workforce. According to the Harvard Business Review, frontline managers “make up 50% to 60% of a company’s management ranks and directly supervise as much as 80% of the workforce.” They do this by setting the tone for team culture and productivity, and directly influence whether workers feel safe speaking up or prefer to stay silent.  

Ignoring frontline managers means missing the very people who: 

• Translate strategy into practice. Frontline managers make corporate goals real in day-to-day workflows. 
• Shape culture. They model how workers interact with customers and each other, and how to adapt to change and new ideas.  
• Strengthen productivity. Their ability to engage teams determines the effectiveness of their teams and whether initiatives succeed or stall. 

Recognizing Frontline Managers As Change Managers 

The reality is that frontline managers are not supported well enough in their management duties. According to McKinsey and Company, frontline managers across industries spend 30% to 60% of their time on administrative duties and meetings, 10% to 50% on non-managerial tasks, and a mere 10% to 40% on managing their frontline employees, leaving them with too little time and capacity to support employees effectively. When frontline managers are unsupported, the business suffers, engagement falters, turnover increases, productivity falls, innovation stalls, and worker voice initiatives get lost in translation.  

Frontline managers are not just supervisors; they are change managers. They link two critical flows: 

• Top-down: translating corporate priorities into clear expectations for frontline workers 
• Bottom-up: elevating frontline worker voice back to leadership in ways that align with business goals and can shape policy and practice 

This dual role makes them uniquely powerful. They can be the champions who bring corporate and frontline perspectives into focus with the right resources, capacity, and training.  

Too often, that supportive training is missing. Many employers do invest in training and leadership development for executives and skills training for frontline staff. But frontline managers fall through the cracks. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report, only 44% of managers have received any management training. This suggests frontline managers are often promoted for their technical expertise without getting the necessary and critical investments in skills development and training needed to thrive in their roles.  

Key Skills Frontline Managers Need to Advance Worker Voice 

In 2025, Jobs for the Future (JFF) launched a six-month Frontline Manager Forum on Worker Voice to explore and test real-world strategies to advance worker voice in the workplace. Through that forum, we asked frontline managers to identify the most critical skills to advance worker voice and frontline managers’ training gaps. We uncovered two key insights: 

Frontline managers know that durable, people-centered skills form the foundation for supporting worker voice. The top four skills identified by frontline managers were: 

• Emotional intelligence: Managers who practice self-awareness, self-control, and social awareness build trust and psychological safety, creating conditions where workers feel comfortable speaking up. 
• Active listening: Going beyond hearing words, managers who practice active listening validate worker perspectives and signal that their input matters. 
• Coaching: Effective coaching turns worker ideas into growth opportunities, encouraging continuous participation and reinforcing that employee voices lead to career and skill development. 
• Conflict resolution: Addressing tensions fairly and transparently prevents silence, ensures varied perspectives are respected, and keeps worker voice channels open. 

Frontline managers live the human side of business every day. They are closest to workers and customers, and they know that building trust and truly listening are the bedrock of worker voice. Without these skills, employees don’t feel safe to share their perspectives and expertise.  

While frontline managers selected durable skills as higher in importance, they identified weaker proficiency in the execution skills needed to translate employee input into action. Those skills were data analysis and action planning. This is a key skill gap that reflects a common challenge we’ve identified in employers: They often struggle most with moving insights to action. 

• Data analysis: Understanding and interpreting survey results, focus group feedback, or performance data are critical for spotting patterns and elevating worker insights to leadership and developing a business case for your change efforts. 
• Action planning: Translating input into concrete steps ensures that worker voice results in visible change, closing the loop and reinforcing trust. 

This is a critical tension—frontline managers know what matters most for worker voice, but they often lack the tools, training, and time to move beyond listening to creating visible and measurable change. Without these critical skills, feedback loops stall, and worker engagement and trust erode.  

If frontline managers are underprepared, worker voice initiatives will inevitably falter—and countless other organizational priorities like safety protocols, productivity campaigns, and innovation efforts will falter alongside them.  

The lessons from the Frontline Manager Forum on Worker Voice are simple but urgent. Frontline managers are eager to champion worker voice and contribute more meaningfully to their workplaces, but unless employers invest in the necessary skills development training, frontline managers cannot fully unlock their unique and powerful strengths as translators, culture builders, and productivity drivers.