10 insights on frontline agility & performance from Axonify Community Days

The frontline isn’t just changing, it’s redefining what it means to be customer-ready. Today, every interaction must deliver value for both the business and the customer, and organizations that adapt at the speed of change win.

At Axonify Community Days in Toronto, HR, Operations and L&D leaders revealed bold strategies and proven playbooks for building agile teams, ensuring flawless execution and powering customer experiences that drive growth.

Over two action-packed days, HR, operations and L&D leaders shared bold strategies, swapped hard-won lessons and painted a powerful vision for the future.

Here are the must-read takeaways:

1. Break down silos and make learning a business-critical initiative

Learning delivers the most value when it stops living in its own box. To truly drive results, it must shift from being “just training” to a strategic function embedded into operations. When HR, operations and enablement share ownership, learning becomes a lever for safety, compliance, communication, performance and more.

Customer insight: Giant Eagle shifted learning into their HR operations team and has since driven measurable improvements in critical KPIs, including a 13% reduction in safety incidents and increases in OSAT scores.

2. Frontline managers are the backbone of performance

Performance starts—and often stalls—with frontline managers. These leaders, whether in-store, in HR or managing day-to-day operations, form the spine of execution. Their engagement, clarity and consistency directly influence business outcomes. That’s why more organizations are investing in targeted, ongoing manager development.

Customer insight: Longo’s transformed its Department Manager Training (DMT) program into a scalable, blended model using Axonify as the central hub for learning, resources and virtual collaboration. The result: a 91% promotion rate for DMT graduates. Heritage Communities also saw a 75% improvement in employee retention after introducing manager-focused development programs.

3. Prove ROI early to drive long-term momentum

Frontline training programs gain traction when early wins build credibility and trust. Demonstrating quick, quantifiable results—like faster onboarding or reduced training time—opens doors for deeper business partnerships and expanded investment.

Customer insight: goeasy launched a new frontline enablement strategy that reduced eLearning time by 138 hours per employee, saving $1.2 million annually. These early wins earned L&D broader support across the business, leading to expanded programs tied to revenue performance.

4. Prepare frontline teams at the speed of change

In a fast-moving business environment, agility depends on how quickly frontline teams can adapt. Whether it’s a shift in strategy, structure or customer expectations, businesses need agile learning approaches that prioritize speed, relevance and impact.

Customer insight: During a major sales team reorganization, Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits launched the “Summer Heatwave” campaign—a fast, focused enablement initiative blending training and performance incentives. The campaign boosted engagement, clarified new roles and drove increased sales activations during a critical transition.

5. Build systems that scale with your business

As organizations grow, especially through acquisitions or rapid expansion, they need scalable systems, not just more people. The key is enabling teams consistently across all locations, while allowing for local flexibility. This approach keeps employees aligned and connected to the broader mission.

Customer insight: Heritage Communities plans to triple in size over the next decade. To support that growth, they’re using Axonify to scale successful programs across newly acquired locations, centralizing key tools while maintaining flexibility for local teams.

6. Effective communication supercharges learning and engagement

Learning initiatives are most powerful when paired with clear, consistent communication. Two-way communication doesn’t just keep frontline employees informed—it builds trust, reinforces learning in the flow of work and ensures teams feel connected to the business. When communication and learning work hand in hand, organizations see higher engagement and stronger performance outcomes.

Customer insight: At Heinen’s, communication proved to be the ultimate performance driver. By blending product knowledge campaigns, onboarding and leadership development into Axonify Communications, they achieved 94% communication engagement and 91% overall platform participation. This two-way approach reinforced learning in the flow of work, boosted CSAT scores and kept teams connected across locations, showing that when it comes to workforce communication, Heinen’s truly hit a hole in one.

7. Redesign remote frontline experiences to reduce attrition

For fully remote frontline teams, it’s harder to recreate the energy of in-person environments—and easier to lose people early. That’s why onboarding must be engaging, multimodal and continuous from day one.

Customer insight: At BMO, a remote financial services department learned that if new hires “don’t see the WIIFM [What’s In It For Me] early on, you lose them.” By showing new employees how top performers use the platform to succeed, they connect learning to real-world outcomes and keep talent engaged.

8. Treat frontline employees like your customers

Every initiative—whether technology, policy or process—should start with a focus on the end-user. For enablement teams, that means treating the frontline as the customer and getting into the field to understand their reality.

Customer insight: AT&T emphasized the importance of being “crazily focused on your customer,” urging teams to regularly engage with frontline employees to understand their needs, blockers and motivators. That insight ensures learning is always relevant and actionable.

9. Solve performance problems by addressing skills, motivation and environment

True performance doesn’t come from training alone. You can build skills and spark motivation, but without the right environment—processes, tools and leadership—performance suffers. HR, L&D and operations must align to remove barriers and support sustainable behavior change.

Customer insight: Avolta breaks performance into three parts: capability, motivation and environment. Even when people know what to do and want to do it, they can’t perform if the environment holds them back—like a cyclist without a safe lane. When Avolta improved the work environment, performance naturally followed.

10. Use AI to unlock smarter, safer support for the frontline

AI is transforming what’s possible for frontline teams. It enables real-time support, skips unnecessary training, improves compliance and provides access to the right information—instantly and in the language the employee prefers. It also creates a safe, judgment-free way to ask tough or personal questions.

Customer insight: Lunds & Byerlys adopted Max, Axonify’s AI-powered digital assistant, to support frontline employees with multilingual, confidential access to HR and policy information. Max provides real-time answers without disrupting the flow of work, helping employees feel supported and safe. Since launch, the company has seen a 4% year-over-year improvement in hospitality scores.

Community and connection are a winning strategy

Beyond the sessions, Axonify Community Days in Toronto was a celebration of connection, innovation and cross-functional collaboration. When HR, L&D and operations leaders come together to share what works, new ideas take root—and frontline teams thrive.