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A podcast for HR and operations leaders who run frontline teams.
Hosted by Casey Carey, CMO at TCP Software, The Shift Advantage covers what it takes to keep frontline operations running well. Employee engagement, scheduling, labor costs, compliance, AI and workforce technology. The things that decides whether your best people stay or leave.
Each episode features conversations with HR executives, operations leaders, and industry experts who are solving these problems day to day. If you manage frontline workers in healthcare, retail, warehousing, manufacturing, or any industry where the work happens in shifts, this show is built for you.
Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at tcpsoftware.com
Welcome to The Shift Advantage. I'm Casey Carey. Like many of you, I worked frontline jobs in my youth. I worked in retail. Even before I was old enough to officially work, I was unloading trucks, stocking shelves, and helping with inventory. In high school, I managed a couple of movie theaters and fueled aircraft at the local airport.
And then I paid my way through university working construction, mostly digging ditches in the Arizona desert. It was always a strong reminder of why I was going to school. I've spent the last decade on the other side, building technology for the same kind of frontline teams I used to work on. So this show sits right in the middle of both of those worlds: what it's actually like on the ground and what it actually takes to do it well.
Personally, I would never consider myself a frontline expert, but I do know that frontline work is very different. It's dynamic, immediate, and inevitable. It's where the action happens. As a leader, it can be hard, especially when the schedule falls apart an hour before a shift or when equipment breaks down.
That's the world this show lives in. If you're leading a frontline team in a hospital, a warehouse, a restaurant, anywhere the work can't be done from a laptop, then this show is for you. My goal is to go deep on something nobody's really talking about: what it takes to be great at running a frontline. So let's start with the stories no one is telling.
100 million. It's a number that may surprise many of you. That's the estimated size of the frontline workforce in the US. It represents about 70% of all jobs and a staggering three trillion plus in annual compensation and rewards. But a quick search on the internet, social media, and even Amazon will tell you very few people are talking about what it takes to build and run frontline teams.
In fact, recent Amazon search, I found two books on running frontline teams. That's shocking. There's lots of content on the frontline workforce: how they're underpaid, overworked, disrespected, and generally have a poor experience, which leads to high attrition. So a lot of the content out there is focused on recruiting, onboarding, and training. That makes sense.
So the obvious question is, why is no one talking about how to become great at building and running frontline teams? I think this gap is in part because frontline teams are very different. If you think about it, nursing is different than part-time retail, which is different than a trade service tech, et cetera.
All these jobs vary in terms of their roles, responsibilities, and skills required. I think an important part of these conversations has to be a clear definition of the frontline team that we're talking about and the attributes that apply to each of those roles. So think about, like, part-time versus full-time. Customer-facing, particularly retail, hospitality. There's high-skilled and credential roles like nursing, trades, transportation. And there's high-value, low-skill roles (distribution centers, fulfillment centers, manufacturing) where the job really is just to fill the line. And then there's tech-enabled roles versus roles that really have no tech at all.
I think the right conversation is a function of knowing what kind of frontline we're talking about and the dynamics and specifics of each of those roles. So yes, every frontline team is very different. But if you think about it, regardless of industry, there's five common threads that hold true for every frontline team.
The first is: The nature of work is changing. Shift-based work is evolving in response to technology, labor trends, changing employee expectations, and new operating models.
And employee experience continues to be a key area of focus. Companies are focused on attracting, engaging, and retaining frontline workers, and they're doing so through better scheduling, stronger culture, thoughtful leadership, and tools and technologies that support the day-to-day employee.
Labor optimization and compliance is front of mind for most frontline leaders. They're thinking about how to improve workforce efficiency while staying compliant with ever-changing labor laws, managing their overtime, controlling absenteeism, and making sure they're fair and effective in their work practices.
The fourth common thread is technology, AI, and improved operations. Digital tools, workforce technology, analytics, and better operational processes are helping organizations not only run smarter but also improve coverage and make better frontline decisions.
And then finally, just managing the frontline. Probably one of the most important factors that are common across all industries. And really, how do you lead a distributed shift-based team? How do you create consistency, accountability, and resilience, and do that across locations and roles, is where the real opportunity lies. Overall, these are five key common threads that provide a very solid foundation and mental model for our upcoming conversations.
So at the center of this podcast is a pretty simple idea. The way you manage the frontline can create a competitive advantage. I know that probably sounds like a big claim, but if you think about something as simple as setting a schedule, on the surface, it seems pretty straightforward. It's basically a game of Tetris using names, dates, times, shifts, skills, locations, whatever it is you need to take into account.
But that schedule ultimately determines a lot more than who shows up on Tuesday morning. It affects labor costs, overtime, the customer service and experience, employee flexibility, the manager's time, and over time, it can affect whether an employee decides to stay or go. So scheduling decision isn't an operational decision. It's also a cost decision, an employee experience decision, and in many cases, a revenue decision. That's what makes this space so interesting. These things are all connected, and the best organizations understand those connections.
I also have four strong beliefs that will be the foundation of the conversations in this podcast.
Belief one: Employee experience happens one shift at a time. We usually talk about employee experience in big concepts like culture, purpose, values, but ultimately it comes down to, what does it actually feel like day to day for somebody working the shifts? That really is the experience. Was I able to get the shift I was looking for? Did my coworkers show up on time? Can I swap when I need to? Is my manager treating me fairly? Is my payroll correct? All those things matter and happen every day on the frontline.
Belief two: Frontline managers matter more than we give them credit to. Think about what we ask them to do. Responsible for staffing, safety, team morale, productivity, all this within a single hour. We can have a great corporate strategy, we can have great technology, we can have a great employer brand, but if the frontline manager is overwhelmed, poorly equipped, or simply doesn't know how to lead people, employees will feel that immediately. That's one of the reasons we're gonna spend a lot of time on this show talking about frontline leadership. 'Cause if we want better frontline organizations, we have to have the people running those teams to be successful.
Belief three is really this idea that flexibility and efficiency don't have to be enemies. There's a natural tension between employee flexibility and operational efficiency, that somehow they have to sit on the opposite sides of the table. If the business becomes more efficient, somehow employees automatically get the short end of the stick. I actually don't think it has to work that way. We should think about how we can design work so it works better for both the employee and the business. How do we create flexibility without pushing burden onto the manager? That's where process, technology, and leadership matter. I think organizations that solve that tension well are the ones that can develop a real advantage.
And then finally, belief four: Technology is a means, not the point. There's lots of innovation in the space right now: AI, automation, forecasting, self-service. Lots of opportunities to improve business operations and the employee experience. But ultimately, it comes down to, are we making better decisions? Are we giving employees more control? Are we reducing administrative work? And do managers actually now have time to manage people? That's where the technology really can be brought to bear.
So you're probably asking, why this podcast and why now? There's really four major shifts that are happening across the industry. The first is employee expectations: gig work, side hustles, employees demanding more flexibility, more control, and more transparency. We continue to have labor shortages. Unemployment's running around 4%, and it's one of our biggest expense lines. Costs continue to go up, and yet we still can't staff all the positions. Other input costs continue to rise, forcing organizations to improve productivity and be more intentional and thoughtful about where and how they spend their money. And finally, AI is moving really fast. This is the moment we have an opportunity to rethink how frontline teams are run and how do we get that right.
But through all that change, there's a tension we have to keep in view. The goal can't be simply to optimize every minute of labor. It can't be simply to give employees everything they want to get them to stay. The opportunity is at the intersection of those two ideas: better outcomes for employees, better outcomes for the business. Because when you think about it, every shift creates hundreds of moments, moments that can make an organization a little better or a little worse. Individually, those moments may seem small, but multiply them across hundreds of employees, thousands of shifts, and an entire organization, and they become something much bigger. They can become an advantage.
I'm Casey Carey. Thanks for joining me on the very first episode of The Shift Advantage. I'm glad you're here because the frontline advantage isn't given. It's earned every shift, every day. Be sure and subscribe and follow so you don't miss the next episode. Also, follow me on LinkedIn, and if today's conversation sparked something, go to tcpsoftware.com for additional resources and tools to run your frontline better. See you next time.
I'll keep this short because you've got a frontline to run. Thank you for listening. Follow The Shift Advantage wherever you get your podcasts and visit tcpsoftware.com for more tools and insights on how to run your frontline right. See you next time.