Reaching the people doing the work: What stuck with me from Spotlight on Frontline

After two days and countless insightful conversations at Firstup’s Spotlight on Frontline event, one question kept coming back to me: can we truly reach everyone in our organizations with the messages and info they need…and want?

My answer is ‘yes.’

I walked in expecting to talk about Firstup and all the ways we can layer communications and deliver messages to people, no matter where they are.

I walked out thinking about how Nebraska Medicine, Wegmans, and MGM Resorts draw their team members in by tapping into what they care about most, and sometimes — just by serving up content to brighten their day or make them smile before pulling them into critical assignments and operational priorities.

As someone who leads internal communications for a company that sells an internal communications platform, I live on both sides of this work, and my time spent at Spotlight on Frontline gave me a lot to think about on both.

I left understanding that to be successful in reaching frontline team members, you have to balance three important things:

• Compelling content (can be insightful, emotional, or even just fun)
• Operational content – giving team members what they need to do their jobs, reducing friction, and using all of the channels they might prefer
• Layering all of these messages artfully

Across a full day of sessions, our industries couldn't have been more different. We come from grocery, healthcare, airlines, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and more, but our challenge is all the same — how do we best get the right information to the people doing the work, and doing it in a way that resonates and enables our teammates to achieve the results they’re after?

As anyone in internal comms can tell you, this isn’t a small challenge, even if you have several different channels from which employees choose to get info.

Even though intranets are largely still the centerpiece of internal comms in an org, they rank second-to-last in effectiveness among communication channels. 61% of employees report they’ve missed a policy or procedural update they were supposed to act on, and 93% of organizations with more than 10,000 employees report information overload. (Firstup State of Employee Engagement)

Four themes surfaced from our time together at Spotlight on Frontline. Here's what stuck with me.

The clearest strategy can fail, not because it’s based on the wrong idea, but because it was executed badly. This typically happens when communication misses the mark for the people doing the work.

Our CEO, Bill Schuh, made the case that the intranet is a failed model for reaching the frontline audience. But activating this group is what connects strategy to results.

One data point I keep coming back to: 40% of frontline workers cite their manager as their most trusted source of information, while only 16% of hourly workers say the same of more senior leadership.

Four very different organizations shared the same truth: people engage with what feels like theirs:

• Wegmans leveraged authentic relationships and deep listening to keep them on the Best Places to Work list since 1998. Their 3-S approach of Sponsorship, Simplicity, and Storytelling supports their internal comms platform, where 95% of all employees are participating
• Nebraska Medicine learned that fun content can have strategic value. Their candy bracket reached 75% of viewers. Come for the fun, stay for the critical.
• JetBlue turns corporate comms into crew comms through voice, storytelling, and visuals. Best advice: write like a human. Plain-language "what to know" updates lifted open rates 3-8% 
• FMOL Health focused on improving access, experience, and community, taking mobile app adoption from 45% to 98%

• Knife River put schedules where truck drivers already look. Their Turnkey Times shortcut drew 6,455 clicks in a single month, and the lesson was to keep it simple and let dispatchers own it. (Yes, flip phones came up!)
• MGM Resorts relied on email, but only about a third of employees had a company email address. Their Firstup LEO mobile app reaches 67% of 64,297 eligible employees across their many brands and properties.
• Manufacturing track: MasterBrand conducted a masterclass on keeping leadership comms to the frontline as clear as possible through major company changes; Newell Brands showed how safety metrics improve with consistent and creative campaigns — all year long, and World’s Finest Chocolate shared how their mobile app is the place they prioritize for frontline engagement
• Cooper Standard: uses Firstup audience targeting features to get specialized information into the right hands and gets executive leaders involved, which drives engagement and a strong culture

Our Chief Product Officer, Cheryl Chavez, and Director of Product Marketing, Hallie Pridham, walked through what's new and what’s coming in Firstup: personalized custom homepages, journey automation insights and packaged solutions (New Manager Readiness and NurseStart), AI Search, user-generated content, and productivity integrations.

Then Chief People Officer Sabra Sciolaro and I shared what it looks like when Firstup runs on Firstup. We practice a ‘Customer Zero’ approach — putting our platform features to the test with our own global employees to achieve real business outcomes. Most recently, we did this with our core values refresh & relaunch, mid-year performance reviews, and our own go-to-market operating cadence. The go-to-market results: our most-engaged GTM Hub users are also our top revenue performers.

This is why we clear a day or two on our calendars to attend events like Spotlight on Frontline: we dive into the nitty-gritty of comms strategy, the messaging, and the ways we deliver the details across all channels with 100% focus to connect with our co-workers — many of whom are on the front lines working around the clock to keep the business running. As comms pros, we love our jobs when we can see we’ve made the workday easier or a bit brighter, and we pull together when there’s a problem to solve.

These are the moments you don’t see outside the sessions — talking with my friends from Colgate-Palmolive over lunch, and with my friends from Quest Diagnostics over dinner, and so many new friends in the hallways between speakers, on the patio space, and on the rooftop overlooking the city — all conversations lead back to shared moments we’ve experienced in this work. And we wouldn’t trade a minute for something else.

To everyone who came to Atlanta, showed up with great questions, ready to share what's working (and what isn't): thank you! I can’t wait to see what you’re doing next…and we have some of you ready to share your stories in upcoming webinars and future Firstup events! (stay tuned)

As for me, I’m already looking ahead — we’ve nailed down the date for the next Spotlight on Frontline, this time in Austin!

Mark your calendar for the week of October 19, 2027 — what a beautiful time to get together in Texas and focus on our frontline team members. See y’all there!