The Frontline Conversation: Very Different Types of Frontline Workers

Josh Bersin [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to The Frontline Conversation. I'm Josh Bersin, and I'm joined again by Josh Secrest from Paradox by Workday. Josh, last time we laid the foundation — today I want to get into the complexity. Because frontline isn't one thing, is it?

Josh Secrest [00:00:20]:
Not even close. Our research identified more than 800 distinct frontline job titles in the U.S. alone. A phlebotomist. A line cook. A warehouse picker. A hotel front desk agent. A security guard. These are all "frontline" — but the hiring process, the qualification requirements, the training, the retention drivers — almost nothing is the same across them.

Josh Bersin [00:00:55]:
So what's the right way to segment it?

Josh Secrest [00:01:02]:
We look at a few key dimensions. First: is the role licensed or credentialed? A CNA needs specific certification. A barista doesn't. That immediately changes your hiring timeline, your sourcing, your compliance requirements. Second: is the role customer-facing? That changes the type of screening questions that matter — you're evaluating soft skills differently than you are for an operational or production role. Third: what's the physical or scheduling complexity? Some frontline jobs are 9-to-5. Others are rotating shifts, 24/7 operations, seasonal surges. All of that has to be built into the hiring flow.

Josh Bersin [00:02:20]:
And yet most companies have one ATS, one application template, one process.

Josh Secrest [00:02:28]:
Which is why so many struggle. The corporate ATS was built for knowledge worker hiring and then extended to frontline as an afterthought. You end up with a licensed nurse going through the same 45-question application as a seasonal retail associate. It wastes everyone's time and signals that the company doesn't understand the role. The best organizations are building segmented hiring experiences — light and fast for high-volume hourly roles, more structured for roles requiring credentials or more complex assessment.

Josh Bersin [00:03:30]:
Talk about the economics of this market. How big is frontline work in dollar terms?

Josh Secrest [00:03:37]:
Enormous. We're talking more than $3 trillion in pay and rewards investment annually in the U.S. frontline workforce. And yet the HR tech investment in serving that workforce has historically been a fraction of what's been spent on knowledge worker tools. That's changing rapidly — but the gap between the size of the market and the quality of the tooling has been massive. Companies like Paradox were founded specifically to close that gap.

Josh Bersin [00:04:40]:
What should HR leaders actually do with this? If someone's listening and they have a mixed workforce — corporate and frontline — where do they start?

Josh Secrest [00:04:50]:
Start by mapping your frontline roles against those three dimensions: licensed or not, customer-facing or operational, schedule complexity. Then look at where your biggest hiring friction is — application abandonment, time-to-fill, no-shows. Pick your highest-volume, highest-pain role and redesign that experience first. Build a conversational, mobile-first flow. Measure the change. The results will speak for themselves — and they'll give you the business case to expand.

Josh Bersin [00:06:00]:
Josh, great follow-up to our first conversation. There's clearly a lot more ground to cover in this series.

Josh Secrest [00:06:08]:
We've barely scratched the surface. Looking forward to the next one.