Most Innovative Workforce Enablement Solutions Provider 2024

Axonify is a frontline-forward learning and enablement platform used by companies such as Walmart, Merck, and Foot Locker to train their employees during five minutes each day in the flow of work with devices they are already using. With bite-sized gamified microlearning, custom training content, embedded communication and more, Axonify is revolutionising the way frontline workers learn, connect and accomplish goals—and they’re only getting started. As frontline workers navigate increased levels of complexities and safety concerns in the workplace, Axonify is finding new ways to support, with a roadmap that includes task management, skills development and more AI functionality. Axonify is closing gaps within traditional learning solutions that have underserved frontline workforces for decades—and that has led the solution to receive this year’s award for Most Innovative Workforce Enablement Solutions Provider. We spoke with JD Dillon, Axonify’s Chief Learning Architect, to learn more about Axonify’s role in helping frontline workers navigate an increasingly complex environment.

No industry has been left unscathed by the current turbulent economy, changing consumer habits and the current aftermath of a worldwide pandemic. Industries such as retail, supermarkets, hotels, and foodservice are particularly feeling the crunch. As are frontline workforces globally—individuals who are working directly with your customers and your products. They are desperately looking for the right tools, support and information to do their jobs to its’ highest standards. They want to follow protocol in highly regulated, safety-critical environments. They want to build a sense of community and share ideas across highly distributed locations and teams. But it is just not happening. 

Why? Here’s the understatement of the year: the experience of a frontline worker is vastly different from that of a corporate worker.

Firstly, frontlines have a massive impact on customer experience—research has uncovered an undeniable link between the role of employees and customer engagement. It also shows that frontline workers face higher levels of emotional labour compared to their corporate counterparts, and require more agility and adaptability while navigating volatile settings, with recent Axonify research finding that 40% of retail and grocery employees feel scared to go to work. In other words, the frontline experience is getting more complex, more challenging, and much more dangerous- and they urgently need the right support, information and resources to navigate it.

“Frontline work is different. It’s hands-on. It’s on-location. It’s mobile,” says JD Dillon, Axonify’s Chief Learning Architect. JD has spent his entire 20+ year career supporting frontline employees. He started out managing movie theatres and theme parks before making the jump to L&D with Disney and Kaplan. “Just like any other employee, frontline workers deserve technology that empowers them to tackle challenges, make informed decisions and perform at their best.”

It seems simple, but corporate learning technology isn’t enabling frontlines in this way. Built to meet the needs of deskbound, corporate employees, the traditional LMS has too many gaps. It can’t adequately support the diverse, distributed and task-oriented workforces that comprise frontline industries in retail, supermarkets, hospitality, foodservice, warehouses and more.

For one thing, it’s not available in their moments of need. Let’s face it: society is still in a labour crunch, and frontline staff members are diving in as quickly as possible. They must onboard quickly on the basics and then pull up additional training resources as needed, in the flow of work, with the devices they’re already using—from personal smartphones to Zebra handhelds and much more. 

The traditional LMS also distils “success” down to a few basic metrics, such as completion rate or test scores. At the scale of frontline organisations, which often employ tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers, there is a scalability required to monitor and optimise any technology being utilised—and when L&D teams are only getting the bare minimum of data, there is also a lost opportunity for more insights to make data-driven decisions and improve the overall frontline experience.

Most importantly: the traditional approach is inherently forgettable. 

“Humans are wired to retain info in small bites over time. To make knowledge stick, they need to start applying it right after they learn it,” says JD. “Traditional corporate training fights against this human nature with lengthy classroom sessions and online courses that feel a lot like school. Then employees quickly forget what they learn—if they learned it at all—because they’re overwhelmed with everyday tasks.” 

As a result, frontline workers are underserved when it comes to getting the training, information, resources, and enablement they need to do their jobs well. This is a problem, especially as frontline industries are experiencing disruptions and challenges like never before.

“Today’s workplace is a balancing act. Managers are being challenged to do more with less while still delivering exceptional experiences that bring customers back,” says JD.

“Plus, they need to prepare to deal with the next big operational change, which could be anything from a new regulation, the next big product release or an emergency situation.”

According to JD and the company, all of these disruptions have one thing in common: the need for frontline staff to have the knowledge, skills, tools and motivation to do their best to help businesses overcome them and achieve their goals. And the reality is, it takes more than a day in a classroom or a two-hour eLearning module to ensure employees are capable and confident enough to make the right decision when it matters most.

That’s why Axonify was created. Since its inception more than 10 years ago, it’s been purpose-built for the frontline workforce. Axonify aims to close the digital divide between corporate and frontline workers by building technology, content and services that fit how frontline work is done.

By integrating training, communication and operational support tools, Axonify provides frontline workers with the personalised enablement they need, precisely at the moment they need it during their shift. Using organisational data, Axonify personalises the experience for each individual employee automatically, catering to both brand-new hires and seasoned tenured staff with everything from adaptive learning that addresses specific performance gaps to a fully translated digital experience in each employee’s preferred language.

The Axonify experience begins with a new hire’s onboarding, where both hands-on and digital training identifies each employee’s strengths and gaps. Axonify then targets training to focus on each person’s most crucial needs.

“Managers play a critical role across the frontline experience,” says JD. “Axonify helps them balance the demands of their work and focus on enabling their people, instead of getting bogged down in admin duties.”

After onboarding, employees continue to use Axonify, completing daily practice activities and refresher training on their preferred devices in just three to five minutes per shift.

“Every time someone logs into Axonify, they’re greeted by an experience tailored specifically for them, with bite-sized information to support their work, navigate change and improve their performance. And it’s all designed to fit seamlessly within the workflow so we’re not disrupting the operation,” says JD.

Opportunities to play games, earn points and foster competition with coworkers enhance the experiences and motivates staff to return to the platform every single day. And it works. Eighty-three percent of Axonify users worldwide access the platform an average of two to three times per week.

A learning platform is only as good as the content it delivers. In addition to the company’s proprietary training and communication materials, Axonify is home to the world’s largest collection of frontline-focused training content, with 860+ topics expertly created by seasoned instructional designers.

“As a task-centric workforce, frontline workers have very unique training needs,” says JD. “They need specific training on how to do very specific tasks ranging from properly stacking produce in a grocery store to de-escalating an angry customer in a hotel. That type of off-the-shelf content wasn’t available, so customers were spending a lot of time and money to build it from scratch. We saw that need, and built out an ever-growing marketplace that meets the particular requirements of the frontline audiences we serve.”

Customers can also use AI to customise Axonify’s library of training videos to reflect their branding, voice, language—even the uniforms.

With technology evolving at lightning speed, revolutionising how we work and connect, what’s next for Axonify?

“We’re constantly speaking with our customers and conducting research on the frontline work experience. We’ll continue to expand our capabilities to provide more value to the people using our technology on the job every day as well as to stakeholders across the business, including Operations, Human Resources and Learning & Development,” says JD.

Axonify is also assessing the ever-shifting technology landscape to consider how capabilities like generative AI can further augment the frontline digital experience.

“We’ve been using AI for years to adapt and personalise training, and now we’re expanding our AI-powered technology to make Axonify available in more than 60 languages, develop AI-driven digital assistants and more to get the right information into the hands of the people who need it,” says JD. 

“This has been an underserved audience for far too long. And to give frontlines the information they sorely need, we need to give organisations the right tools and features to make it easy to deliver training, communication, and resources at scale. So we’ll continue to explore new ways to do just that.”

For its steadfast commitment to enabling frontline teams in an ever-changing landscape, Axonify has received this year’s Most Innovative Workforce Enablement Solutions Provider 2024 award.

For business enquiries visit axonify.com/contact/connect