Make Learning Work for the Frontline Workforce

For the 80% of the global workforce on the front lines, traditional training models often miss the mark. They are too generic, too disconnected from the realities of the job, and take too much time to complete.

Sandra Moran, the chief marketing officer at Schoox, a learning platform based in Austin, Texas, explains why organizations must rethink learning as a continuous, in-the-flow experience built on short, targeted “microbursts” of content tailored to real roles and measurable business outcomes.

Moran met with SHRM at the Unleash America conference in Las Vegas in March.

SHRM: Frontline employees often have limited time and access to traditional training. What strategies can organizations use to make learning more accessible, engaging, and relevant for frontline workers?

Moran: Not having time for training is one of the most often cited challenges for both frontline and corporate workers. For frontline workers in particular, it is not reasonable to think that they will sit down behind a computer, take a long course, and be able to translate that course into demonstrable skills. Delivering microbursts of training is important. Provide shorter, video-based, easy-to-observe skills training between shifts or in the flow of work instead of expecting frontline employees to take significant time away from their shift and take a course.

The vast majority of employees say that they want training, and they don’t feel like they’re getting the training that they actually need. In surveys of front-line workers, Schoox found that only 24% said they strongly agree that they have the right amounts of training they need to succeed at work. A lot of organizations are still sending out one-size-fits-all courses that are not relevant to individual employees’ current roles or proficiencies. Sending one course to everybody is proving to be inadequate for modern workers. Make training relevant to the skills an employee needs to be successful in their job, tailored to the skills they have already mastered. Length, format and relevance are the three immediate focus areas to impact frontline workers with the training they will need to succeed and contribute to business outcomes.

Eighty percent of the global workforce are frontline workers, but most HR tech investments, courses and training solutions are designed for corporate workers. It’s much less effective to take something originally intended for a corporate worker and to try to use it for a frontline employee.

Event: SHRM Talent 2026

SHRM: Many companies struggle to demonstrate the business value of training. How can L&D leaders measure the real impact of frontline learning programs?

Moran: The reason most companies struggle to prove training ROI is that they’re asking the wrong questions. They build a program, deploy it, and then go looking for evidence it worked. That’s backwards.

At Schoox, we start with the business outcome and engineer backwards from there. Before a single course is built, we establish what we call a Business Impact Profile — anchored in the specific skills a role requires and the metrics that prove those skills are working. Revenue per transaction, customer retention, time-to-productivity, compliance rates, whatever moves the needle for that business.

From there, our platform uses AI to generate the learning plan and course content required to close the gaps that actually matter — not a catalog of content that might be relevant, but a precision-built plan for defined outcomes.

Take a retail example: if you want to improve customer loyalty scores, we identify the exact sales behaviors that drive repeat visits, build training around those behaviors, and instrument the measurement before training begins. When scores improve, you’re not guessing whether learning had anything to do with it.

That’s the difference between measuring training and engineering performance. L&D leaders who make that shift stop defending their budget and start driving the business conversation.

SHRM: What approaches help ensure that frontline training actually “sticks” rather than being quickly forgotten?

Moran: First, we’re not just delivering a course. We’re creating the learning plan and courses needed to build certain skills for a specific organization and desired business outcome. Then, we include learning reinforcement, microlearning assessments, and in-the-flow-of-work learning assistants to support ongoing development. With assessments, we continue to tune what is served to employees based on their demonstrated proficiency. That’s how we ensure we’re driving necessary behaviors through reinforcement and training.

The Schoox platform also includes tools to ensure managers know what observable skills employees should be able to demonstrate as proficiency increases. These include checklists that can be applied uniformly across managers, locations, and employees. These checklists are augmented with digital feedback from learning reinforcements, micro-assessments, and digital coaching to form a more complete view of skills proficiency and feed into future learning reinforcement to create an impactful, personalized learning system.     

Resource: Learning and Development

SHRM: What should L&D leaders consider when choosing the right learning technology?

Moran: This is a time when organizations are adapting to accelerate change. Most workers are not satisfied with the learning system in their organization and L&D leaders are missing the data and systems to create effective learning programs and turn themselves into strategic growth partners to their business peers. L&D leaders should ask themselves: Do I know what skills are necessary to generate specific business outcomes? Can I create meaningful learning programs fast enough to keep pace with change? Can I implement personalized learning at scale? Are the workers developing the skills that are needed?

The traditional way of approaching learning and development — building or buying huge catalogs of generic courses — is not going to work going forward. L&D leaders should look for learning platforms that deliver microbursts and mobile-first training. Beyond delivery, look for technology that enables organizations to deliver targeted training capabilities at scale. Training platforms need to be engaging for the employees they are being designed for, relevant to their role and purpose-built to drive performance outcomes for their organizations. Modern training solutions can demonstrate a direct link between training and business impact.