The Josh Bersin Company has unveiled a new framework designed to help HR leaders better understand and manage the rapidly growing frontline workforce. Through its latest Frontline-First Initiative research, Understanding the Frontline Workforce: The Five Types of Frontline Workers, the firm argues that treating frontline employees as a single workforce category is limiting organizational performance, retention, and workforce planning outcomes.
The research highlights how frontline workers differ significantly in skills, compensation, career mobility, hiring complexity, and operational impact, making tailored workforce strategies increasingly critical as industries face labor shortages and changing workforce dynamics.
According to the report, many organizations continue to group frontline employees under a broad “non-office-based workers” category. The Josh Bersin Company says this oversimplification creates blind spots in workforce planning and talent strategy.
The analysis points to substantial differences between frontline occupations, including skill requirements, licensing needs, compensation levels, and career pathways. For example, licensed trades such as vocational nurses, HVAC technicians, and CDL truck drivers command significantly higher wages than entry-level frontline roles.
The report also identifies major operational challenges tied to frontline workforce management. Restaurant servers experience turnover rates as high as 265%, while fast-food crews see turnover around 160%. At the same time, industries such as healthcare face significant labor shortages, including an anticipated global shortage of 10 million licensed healthcare workers by 2030.
The Josh Bersin Company categorized more than 600 occupations from the O*NET database into five distinct frontline workforce segments:
Entry-level, customer-facing frontline roles such as retail associates, restaurant servers, hotel attendants, and call-center agents.
Operational support roles with limited customer interaction, including warehouse pickers, stockroom clerks, kitchen prep staff, and laundry attendants.
Experienced operational and technical positions that do not require formal licensing, such as retail managers, pastry chefs, and wind turbine technicians.
Roles requiring formal certification or licensing, including vocational nurses, HVAC technicians, truck drivers, and hairstylists.
Advanced frontline professionals with ongoing certifications and specialized expertise, including doctors, pilots, pharmacists, and attorneys.
The research estimates there are approximately 32 million customer-facing frontline jobs, 30.5 million back-office frontline roles, and 85 million high-skilled specialist positions across the United States.
The Josh Bersin Company says organizations must move beyond generalized workforce strategies and adopt segment-specific approaches for recruiting, compensation, skills development, and employee engagement.
"It's time to remove a long-standing blind spot in workforce strategy: the assumption that frontline workers can be treated as a single, homogeneous group," said Nehal Nangia, Senior Research Director at The Josh Bersin Company and lead frontline researcher.
"In reality, the sector spans five distinct worker archetypes—each with different risks, skills, motivations, and operational demands."
Josh Bersin, CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, emphasized that the framework provides organizations with a more structured way to manage frontline talent at scale.
"Our new model breaks this large workforce into five distinct segments and then gives managers and HR leaders very specific best practices, hiring dynamics, and pay models for each," Bersin said.
The report also highlights the growing economic significance of frontline workforce development. The frontline training market alone was valued at $25 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $88 billion by 2032.
As AI reshapes white-collar work and organizations face mounting labor shortages across healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and skilled trades, the research suggests frontline workforce optimization will become a core business priority.
The Josh Bersin Company recommends that CHROs map workforce roles against the five frontline categories, prioritize high-risk talent segments, and implement tailored workforce technologies and talent strategies to improve retention, resilience, and operational performance.
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