6 ways to use internal communication to drive frontline employee retention

Frontline employee retention remains a top challenge in 2025, but the key to retention isn’t just higher wages. It’s ensuring frontline employees feel effective and valued in their roles. 

Yet, leaders may not realize the urgency. The Deskless Report 2024 revealed that while frontline employees report an average happiness level of 77%, executives assume it’s much higher at 92%—a 15-point perception gap that can lead to inaction. When leadership believes employees are more satisfied than they actually are, they risk overlooking key issues that drive disengagement and high turnover.

One of the biggest gaps is in internal communication. The Deskless Report uncovered that nearly a quarter of frontline employees feel they lack the essential information needed to make informed decisions, close sales, and perform effectively.

Without clear and consistent communication, even the best engagement strategies—like training, DE&I or wellness programs—won’t have the impact they should. But when frontline employees feel informed and connected, they’re more engaged, more productive and more likely to stay.

Here are 6 ways to use internal communication to improve frontline employee retention:

Retention tactic #1: Dive into the magical world of gamification

Who doesn’t love a good game? A points system can have a massive impact on employee engagement, motivation and employee retention, even without a rewards program. Gamification is a proven strategy that drives results. 90% of employees say it makes them more productive, and organizations that use gamification are seven times more profitable than those that don’t.

The idea is simple: award points for actions that support company goals, like completing onboarding training, engaging with internal communications, or providing feedback. And the impact is clear—employees experience a 48% engagement boost when their work is gamified, and 72% say it motivates them to work harder.

To successfully integrate gamification into workplace communication, focus on key elements: clear goals, transparency, competition, and community. Walkthroughs and explanations ensure everyone starts on equal footing. And if you choose to add rewards, they don’t always need to be monetary. Small perks like a lunch voucher or an extra day off, paired with employee recognition from leadership, can be just as powerful.

▶️ Also read: 3 Questions You Should be Asking About Gamification

Retention tactic #2: Meet staff where they already are— their phones

Have we already touched on mobile learning? Yes. Is it important? Also, yes. When your workforce is deskless it’s important to send communications where your team members will get them. 

A few fun facts: Our research has shown that whether or not it’s permitted, 91% of workers are using their phones at work, with 47% checking their phone 1-2 times per hour. But a whopping 60% of frontline employees said they’re using their phones during shifts for work-related communication, or finding work-related information.

So the takeaway here: Creating engaging, fun internal communications is important. But when your workforce is deskless it’s important to distribute these communications where your employees will get them. And, that’s their smartphone. Using smartphones to communicate with your frontline workforce also means you can share information in real-time with them, when it’s most relevant to them, especially since they don’t typically have access to company emails or intranet sites during their shifts. 

Bonus: employees using bring your own devices (BYOD) approaches are proven to actually save time at work. 

You can also take it a step further and implement a choose-your-own-device (CYOD) strategy. Unlike BYOD approaches, CYOD ensures that frontline workers have access to a variety of devices suited to their roles—whether it’s a desktop computer, a Zebra handheld device, a tablet or a personal smartphone. Designing training and communication tools with responsiveness in mind ensures that all employees, regardless of the device they’re using, have the same access to important resources.

Retention tactic #3: Every employee has a story to tell… So tell them!

Deskless workers are often more removed from the corporate setting—and removed from each other. Despite having thousands of coworkers, frontline and deskless employees likely only know a handful of team members, and usually only the ones who work at the same location or on the same shifts. In fact, according to our research, 60% of frontline workers would like to have a strong community with employees outside their location.  

This is why building an employee experience that fosters community can be an easy win for boosting employee engagement and driving employee retention. And a great way to build an employee community is to bring in their own voices into your communications. This might mean day-in-the-life posts, where employees record their day with video and photos while on the job; it might mean having workers guest-write posts on your communication platform or newsletter; or it might even mean conducting interviews with new employees to help the broader community learn more about each other. 

Not only does this kind of internal communication campaign help your staff feel seen and heard, it helps forge relationships between regions, locations and individual workers that will make them feel more connected and loyal to the company as a whole. 

Retention tactic #4: Use Ask-Me-Anythings (AMAs) to make senior leadership more approachable

In large organizations with thousands of employees, it’s easy to forget the type of information that some workers might find valuable. Opening up communication so that everyone can ask questions and address any concerns can mitigate issues before they become bigger. It also provides a chance for the head office to become more visible to the frontline workforce and increase that sense of belonging and community. 

Enter the wonderful world of ask-me-anythings. Running a senior leadership AMA at your frontline organization is an effective way to learn what employees want to know about, not just what you think they should know about. 

“Do I ever end up squirming up there? Sure. There are plenty of times when I’ve been caught entirely off-guard. But that’s precisely the point. The element of surprise is the secret ingredient that makes the internal AMA such a valuable tool,” explains Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, in a Forbes article on why he started a regular AMA with his employees. 

“When your company scales beyond a certain size, it’s easy to lose touch with what’s relevant for people at different levels of your organization. In this sense, the AMA is a powerful way to collapse corporate hierarchies and ensure that all perspectives—not just those from the top—are heard.”

Retention tactic #5: Go interactive with channels for upward communication and feedback

Gathering upward feedback from your team can go a long way to boosting employee satisfaction and strengthening their employee experience. Plus, surveys and quizzes have the added benefit of adding an interactive element, which is key for effective internal communication. 

With pointed questions, multiple choice answers as well as open-field options, your deskless workers across the company can feel as though their voice matters and that their feedback and opinions are important to the company’s growth. These can identify knowledge gaps that you can fill with future communications, as well as identify opportunities you might not have thought of previously. 

Another benefit is quizzes and surveys allow you to test knowledge rates and identify gaps that need to be addressed either with further communication or more training. It’s also a great way to measure readiness and confidence in an open-ended way by taking a temperature check of sorts with your employees, this can go a long way in improving confidence and boosting employee loyalty and retention. 

Retention tactic #6: Focus on task execution and consistency

Think internal communication is just about company updates and HR initiatives? Think again. Forward-thinking frontline organizations use their internal communications to also drive operational consistency and task execution. 

Think about it this way: your staff wants to do their job well. And they don’t like it when their role and tasks are too ambiguous. 

As Dr. Wendi Adair, Professor of Organizational Psychology, puts it in our Q&A on employee communication:

“Information is power. If you have information, it makes you feel capable and able to do what you need to do. It makes you feel able to help other employees. And that gives you a sense of well-being. We talk about it as power, but it’s really feelings of capability and competence and confidence. And then on the flip side is when you don’t have enough information. So maybe there’s something about your role that’s ambiguous. You don’t know exactly how you’re supposed to go about doing a certain procedure or task. Or maybe you have role conflicts – you have different supervisors asking you to attend to different things and you haven’t been given clear instructions on how to prioritize. That lack of information leads to feelings of uncertainty. Which leads to stress, and would decrease employees’ psychological well-being.”

And, of course, no one likes to feel stressed. When a workforce doesn’t have a clear sense of roles and tasks, there’s a much higher risk for turnover. On the other hand, when organizations leverage an internal communication tool or platform that clearly assigns tasks and reinforces processes, employee productivity, engagement, and retention will soar. 

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The more interactive and engaging your communications, the better received they’ll be by your frontline staff. And the better they are received, the more of an impact they’ll have on your employee retention. It may be a bit more challenging but also very rewarding—for you and them.

Check out how Foot Locker’s mobile-first training approach drives team member behaviors that keep customers smiling.