November 18, 2025 • 22 mins
How do you transform thousands of frontline colleagues from overloaded and under-informed to connected, confident, and AI‑enabled, without breaking the stores?
In this episode of The Retail Podcast, Alex sits down with Chris Chandler (Head of Store Support, Midcounties Co‑op) and Mark Williams (Managing Director, WorkJam EMEA) to unpack a full frontline transformation: from paper, WhatsApp groups and scattered comms… to a single digital frontline platform with 90%+ activation and the removal of many tasks removed in just 12 months.
🔊 Guests
Chris Chandler – Head of Store Support, Midcounties Co‑operative
Chris has spent nearly three decades in retail with Midcounties Co‑op, including time as store and district manager. Today he leads store support, loss prevention, communications, operating model, simplification and continuous improvement across a diverse estate spanning food, travel, childcare and utilities.
Mark leads WorkJam’s European expansion and brings 16 years of global retail operations experience from Shell. His focus: where technology meets process, and how digital tools unlock productivity and engagement for frontline teams.
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⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – Cold open: Mark on AI agents and intelligent frontline processes
00:24 – Welcome back to The Retail Podcast
00:43 – Chris’s role and the Midcounties Co‑op context (estate, regions, sectors
02:03 – Mark’s background and WorkJam’s mission in EMEA
02:48 – The problem: overloaded, fragmented frontline communication
03:59 – From task chaos to a single digital frontline platform
05:09 – Listening to the frontline: surveys, colleague councils, store visits
06:01 – The forgotten frontline in digital transformation
07:30 – Productivity, compliance, Natasha’s Law and value pockets
07:58 – Culture shift: what’s a task vs what’s a communication?
09:28 – Cutting task volume: 750k+ tasks removed and better data
11:09 – AI for the frontline: agents, instant answers and learning triggers
13:08 – Visual merchandising, computer vision and automated replenishment
14:16 – AI for photo validation and faster central decision‑making
15:08 – Privacy, WhatsApp groups and tackling “shadow IT”
17:07 – Safer social channels and peer‑to‑peer support at scale
#TheRetailPodcast #coop #MidcountiesCoop #Retail, #FrontlineWorkers, #AIinRetail, #WorkJam
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The key thing about AI is a genetic AI is the ability to
have multiple agents that can connect, talk to one another and
execute intelligent processes. So do things for us, right?
So there is a real benefit there.
(00:24):
Hello and welcome back to the Retail Podcast.
Now, I'm always spoilt when we have a retailer and partner on
the call with us or on the episode with us.
And today is one of those episodes.
So Chris, why don't you start usoff?
Why don't you give us a quick one minute on who you are and
what you do? Yeah.
Hi, Alex. So I'm Head of Store Support for
(00:45):
the Mid Counties Corp. I've been working for Mid
Counties for 28 years now and over half of that time was I was
either a store manager or a district manager running stores
for our food business. So in my role today, I really
feel that I'm best placed now tosupport those stores with what I
know and I hold responsibility for a loss prevention team, our
(01:08):
communications team, our manageroperating model, also
simplification and continuous improvement.
So we counties is one of the leading independent cooperatives
in the UK, got over 750,000 members, 6 1/2 thousand
colleagues. We operate across food, travel,
early years, childcare and also utilities.
But from a food perspective, we mainly operate out of our core
(01:31):
counties have gone up lost to share Worcestershire, Wiltshire
to Shropshire and sort of West Midlands.
And yeah, so really kind of mixed estate lots, lots of
interesting things going on and that's why we were really keen
to look at this kind of solution.
That's fantastic. Thank you.
Mark. Why don't you give us an
overview of who you are and whatyou do?
Hi. Thanks, Alex and hello
(01:52):
everybody. So Mark Williams, Managing
Director for Workjam EMEA, been with Work Jam for four years
now, brought in to set up and lead our European expansion.
Prior to that 16 years with Shell in global retail
operations. I've got a passion for kind of
where technology meets kind of business process and how we
(02:13):
extend that to the all importantfrontline because for me that's
where it really matters. That's where the rubber hits the
road. They're the individuals who are
dealing with the front line customers coming into the store
or into the operation day in, day out.
So without engaging them, without communicating them and
providing them with digital tools to do their job, you don't
tend to get the productivity that you need off what is a very
(02:36):
cost sensitive, cost conscious, typically operating environment.
It's perfect. Chris, I want to start by
casting your mind back because obviously you've been in the
business a long time. When you were looking at the
problem, there must have been early signals or early signs
that the existing system for frontline communication.
(02:57):
And being someone who's come from that world, I understand
that sometimes there is nothing apart from, you know, pen and
paper when people are talking toeach other.
But I was, I'm curious in, in what were those signals that you
saw when prior to all of the transformation that you've gone
through that this way of workingis no longer fit for purpose?
(03:18):
And then if you, if you don't mind, how did that conversation
evolve into a partnership with with Workjam?
Yeah. So what we started to see was a
really sort of disparate frontline that we're just
overloaded with tasks and activities and communications
coming up them in all kinds of different manners, none of which
were particularly productive. And they had to go and search
(03:39):
for those communications. So we really were trying to
start a journey of understand how do we put communications and
tasks into the hand of our frontline colleagues at the time
that they need them for the right people at the right time.
This really started as a bit of a task journey for us.
We were really trying to find a vendor that could support us in
terms of managing our tasks of frontline.
(03:59):
As we went through the process, we realised there was lots of
opportunity to try and bring in a much more sort of virtuous
circle of bringing communications and tasks and all
the kind of things that colleagues would need to find or
to sort 11 place. We realised quite early on that
actually we were really, really tasked hungry as a as a food
retailer in particular, and trying to find a way that
(04:21):
converted tasks and communications in a simple form
to to the frontline colleagues was absolutely vital for us.
So I think that piece of work that we realised quite early on
was that we needed something more than a task provider.
We need something that brought it all together and would
surface to all colleagues at alltimes.
I. Got you.
(04:42):
I'm just curious, how much of the sort of feedback did you get
from the shop floor? How much were they involved in
the process? Yeah.
A lot. So we've done some early, this
was quite early in odds of what we call our simple store
journey. And we were really trying to
understand the kind of complications of for frontline
colleagues, both in food but also in our travel and early
(05:04):
years nurseries. And so we do regular pulse
surveys with our colleagues. So that was a key part of the
information we get back. We hold colleague council
meetings. So this is kind of tends to be
more of our frontline colleaguesrather than managers who would
give us regular feedback as to what was stopping them being
productive. But most importantly, my team
were out there on the ground in the field being side by side
(05:27):
with the team just to really understand what were the the
points of friction, what was causing them issues?
What was stopping them being as productive as they possibly
could be. I.
Got you. Mark, in terms of when you
obviously look at customers thatare similar to sorry yeah to
customers who've had the same challenges as Chris and mid
counties Co-op. What do you feel are some of the
(05:48):
sort of the things that have gone sort of silently by people
haven't really understood what'sgoing on or or the need for
transformation? What was unappreciated by
retailers that have gone on thisjourney?
Yeah. So I think it's two things.
It's it's helping them initiallyunderstand that the frontline is
kind of forgotten in any digitaltransformation.
(06:09):
So in the head office, we all have teams, we all have
solutions and tools that help usdo our day job better or more
effectively and more efficiently.
But that never really penetrateddown to the frontline.
There still tended to be dated standards, dated approaches, Pen
and paper and and a lot of retailers can kind of miss that
(06:31):
or perhaps they hear it, but area little bit in denial.
It's only the forward thinking kind of retailers like like
Chris and the mid counties Co-opthat that really say, OK, I
understand I have a problem here.
I'm I'm going to own that problem and how can I go about
fixing it? And when they get into the how,
how am I going to fix that? That's when the pocket of
values, pockets of value appear,right.
(06:52):
So, you know, yes, there's a productivity gain there.
Oh, look, there's, you know, some time liberation there,
which I can redeploy for more customer facing time, perhaps
talking about an upsell, perhapsincreasing that basket spend, or
perhaps it might be the other way.
Perhaps it might be more efficient and effective
compliance procedures and audits, making sure things like
Natasha's law, health and safetyrequirements are met in a more
(07:16):
timely way and a more controllable way and reportable
way. Again, liberating time.
That time then is kind of of redeployed and, and let's face
it, we're in a particular periodof, you know, of, of almost
chaos, aren't we? I mean, there's been so much
disruption in retail and other industry verticals which we
serve as well over the last sortof 18 to 24 months, months that,
(07:39):
you know, people are now lookingfor that kind of that
productivity gain, that cost saving, that value add, where
they can get it. I got it.
Thank you. Chris.
Coming back to you when what's interesting when I read about
this is something that retailerstry to achieve, but not
necessarily through this type oftransformation.
And that's basically looking at the culture.
(08:01):
And so when you've got such a disparate business, when you
mentioned earlier you've got you've got stores, you've got
nurseries, you've got travel branches, how intentional was it
to sort of achieve A cultural outcome?
And what lessons would you sharewith other retailers who are
actually trying to build community at scale?
I think you're quite right. I think culture was something
(08:24):
that we really, I don't think wegrasped initially.
It's something that we built on over time as we, as we
established work jam into the business.
I think the mistake a lot of businesses make is they think
the technology is going to drivethe culture, but actually the
business drives the culture, that the technology supports the
culture. And I think everyone was looking
for that golden bullet, that work jam would just coming to
(08:46):
the business and suddenly the culture would be exactly how we
wanted it to be. And actually, that's not how it
works at all. It's, it's that tool to enable
us to drive a different type of culture within our within our
business. And I think it was little steps,
you know, understanding, for example, the difference between
what is a task and what is a communication, I think is a
great example. So, you know, the communications
team that worked for me when we actually really analysed it,
(09:08):
when we started putting it through the funnel of work, Yam
was actually 95% of what we sentout was a task.
It wasn't a communication, it was a task.
And we were telling people to dothings all the time.
So we started to break things into buckets of what is a tell
and what is an advice and what is a comms.
And we started to change that. And where it was kind of
borderline, we're trying to tweak it towards the comms
because the comms is more engaging than a tell.
(09:29):
But then when there's a clear, you must do this by this time,
then that would be a task. And then we'd use that
functionality so that that really slowly but surely sort of
changed that, that that culturaldirection of the business where
we tried to make more things more communicated using its
communication rather than the task wherever possible.
And but then also it's really important to try and find
(09:50):
something that worked across central support teams, across
the different trading groups andall the kind of like disparate
outposts of the of the business,I guess.
How does that, I mean, I'm just curious in terms of
prioritisation then in terms of how that has an impact on how
managers are prioritising work or or measuring in what, what
(10:12):
gets sent to stores from head office.
Has that had an impact on that or or not?
Because obviously 95% what was called communication is that is
a huge number. Yeah.
So what it what it's done is allowed us to very much
streamline those activities overover multiple years now.
So it's not been something that we did straight away.
Initially we effectively replicated our paper based
(10:35):
system into digital form and we didn't really change too much.
But that immediately had a lot of upside in terms of being able
to remotely see performance, remotely see things are being
done without having to send people to a store to see that
that work had been completed. Over time, it's allowed us to
really effectively understand when and where people are
completing tasks, why they're and also the sort of the
(10:57):
validity and the value in those tasks being completed because
now we've got better data. If we're not really doing
anything with that data, why didwe ever ask them to do it?
So that really helped us to question that over time.
And actually, we've probably halved our tasks now over the
last year. In fact, we've taken over 3/4 of
a million tasks, annual tasks out of our business.
Is it in the last 12 months? Wow.
(11:18):
OK. That's so I don't know if this
sort of follows on from that point.
But when you when you're when you're both looking at AI
integration and how you're helping colleagues find answers
to questions faster and then to be able to act with confidence.
How do you envision AI sort of in the future?
(11:39):
Or can you talk through what that experience is from the
frontline in terms of how how this is helping frontline
employees with with their query,sorry, with their queries.
Yeah. I mean, I can probably take the
AI question here. So, so yeah, I mean, AI is, you
know, it's I'd say it's in its people would say it's maturing
(12:00):
and that's been around for a little while, but I would say
it's still in its infancy. The key thing about AI is a
gentic AI. It's the ability to have
multiple agents that can connect, talk to one another and
execute intelligent processes. So do things for us, right?
So there is a real benefit there.
In the example that you gave something like work jams AI
agent, it is there solely for the front line.
(12:23):
And that is exactly to do what you said.
It's to give them access to something immediately.
They might not know what it is that they're looking for, but a
few keywords, a couple of asks into the AI agent and they can
link directly to it. It might be a manual, it might
be a process, it might be a follow on education, it might be
a learning management fast trackprogramme and all of that is
(12:45):
great. What's coming next from Work Jam
are all of those other agents aswell.
So when they ask that question about a management referral
programme, it automatically enrols them and unlocks the
training for them to, to start on that particular journey.
And it also unlocks the HR agent, which perhaps flags them
for a fast track or additional increment or a reward and
(13:06):
recognition coming from the HR team.
So AI is going to touch the frontline, I think in a big way.
It's, it's, it's going to blow up in the next 12 to 18 months.
The other key side to frontline AI is all of the VMS, all of the
visual merchandising, all of thevisual merchandising standards,
some of the, you know, optical recognition capability that's
(13:28):
out there today looking products, are they accurate on
the shelf? Do we need to restock?
Can that agent then speak to a stocking agent which will then,
you know, get to the distribution house to send more
stock into that store? Now we're really getting
intelligent and automated processes as a result of a
genetic AI working well together.
That's how I see it evolving. And as I say, we're, we're
(13:50):
starting and leading with our kind of AI agent and then that
will connect out into into othercapabilities.
Chris, I know it's something that you're looking at from from
Work Jam to support you with as.Well, yeah, I think it's the how
it takes it to the next level. So we very much built our
initial rollout of Work Jam withevery core knowledge centre for
example. But it's quite practical, you
know, encyclopaedia of information, but it's quite hard
(14:13):
to maybe pull some of that information out really easily.
So we want to make it incrediblyeasy for the frontline
colleagues just to be able to ask a very simple question and
go directly to the right solution or answer for them, the
right policy, whatever it might be.
I think it's also how it enablesour central teams to be able to
analyse data quick, more quickly.
So for example, quite as retailers, we've got often ask
(14:35):
stores to submit a photo to show, you know, adherence to
some display or something like that.
Then the exciting bit for me is how the AI can analyse the
photos that come in, for example, and just say every
store's compliant with immediateeffect rather than someone
having to sort of have a look and through all that
information, try and understand this.
Some real gains for us there, both in productivity at the
front and done, but also essentially as well.
(14:56):
Looking at the final two questions, when you when you're
looking let's go from the frontline in terms of privacy
and frontline colleagues being worried about their privacy, was
that Chris, is that I'm trying to sort of separate fact from
fiction. What what was, what's the
reality in in the real world where it's been deployed?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
(15:17):
Reality was there was some concerns about that in the early
stages, no doubt at all, becauseit's the first time we'd really
asked other colleagues to join asort of central application on a
on a on mask on a basis. However, the reality was that we
had every individual site, everyindividual travel branch
probably had their own and WhatsApp group, Facebook group
that was completely unmonitored on police from a central
(15:40):
perspective. And you know, anything went on
those. The beauty of being integrated
with work, we have our messagingfacility that works within the
application and we now get thousands and thousands of
colleagues talking to each otheron a monthly basis within
Workjam. And that means it's controlled
as in it won't let them. We don't monitor it, we don't
watch it, we don't need to, but the philtres within it stop
(16:02):
certain things being discussed but also our open in channels.
It means that colleagues are sort of self policing
themselves. So when colleagues talk to
colleagues, they tend to answer each other's questions, they
tend to police each other. We don't very, very rarely get
involved in any discussions thatare going on.
On the application. There was obviously a level of
concern around sort of the bringyour own device conversations of
(16:23):
the stores of concerns that we're going to walk into shops
and everyone's walking around with their phone in their hand
and they're staying at the screen and not talking to
customers. But actually we found completely
the opposite because it's about freeing colleagues up to have
more time to deliver that customer experience.
And, you know, we've really seenthat benefit.
Mark, do you have anything on that?
No, just it's a very familiar story, Chris is kind of, we call
(16:45):
it shadow IT. So we talk about those WhatsApp
channels, we talk about those Facebook pages, unsecure,
unsanctioned with, with with ourproducts and putting everything
into work jam. Now we take care of all of that
in the back end with the data privacy, with all of the
philtres, that profanity philtres and everything else
that's built into that as as well.
(17:06):
So it we actually see see the opposite and people learn more
towards it, thinking I feel a little bit safer and I feel more
secure now. Perfect.
Thanks, Chris. Final, final question and just
my chaotic brain can't sort of break it into two, so I'll throw
it out. That's one question and let you
decide which way you want to answer it in terms of looking at
the future of Frontline and whatwhat they have on their belt as
(17:30):
they used to call it. I'm really curious on on your
thoughts of the future and what that looks like.
And then in the mix, what was the biggest surprise that the
business sort of said that? I don't know.
Was there an unexpected consequence of this
transformation? Yeah.
So in terms of in many ways I see us refining and refining
Work Jam over time, there'll be certain other things that we
(17:53):
bring in. So there'll be we want to bring
in more integration. We want, we want Work Jam to be
the front door for our colleagues for everything in our
in our business. So in fact, they know they log
into Work Jam, they can find outabout where that helpdesk job
has got to. When's that engineer coming to
fix this in my store, you know, where can I get access my
colleague pulse survey? Where can I access any
(18:14):
information that I want to get to?
So there are some more integrations and more work we
want to do, but that's actually reducing the amount of separate
platforms into one hopefully. So it feels it's all under in
one place. But we do want to refine and
refine tasks and communication. So it's really the critical
information at the critical timefor that frontline colleague.
So certainly in the past, you know, you, you would have to
(18:35):
send that everything to everyonerather than it saying this is
relevant to a colleague who has got post office in their shop.
This is relevant to a colleague who has got, you know, every
parcel service in their shop. So only that relevant group of
people would get that relevant piece of information.
And then in terms of the sort ofunintended consequences, I think
that the, the messaging piece I just mentioned, I think was the
(18:56):
big one for us because what we found, and we had a, a couple of
examples where, you know, we hada system crash on a Sunday on a
particular system. And before you know it, there's
a couple of 100 conversations going on within the channels and
all the colleagues are helping each other and fixing it.
And we never had to get involvedin anytime.
And, you know, people telling each other solutions, they've
worked it out for themselves. It's, it's so much quicker and
(19:18):
more efficient than actually ourcentral teams getting involved
in the conversation. So some of those wins have been
really fantastic. That's.
Wonderful. Yeah.
Anything that impact when you see natural conversation from
your frontline, you can't. I'm going to talk fast because
we're going over time and I promise that we'll get it.
Mark your thoughts on the on thefront line of the future.
What's your vision of that? Yeah.
(19:39):
So I think fully informed, I think being able to get what
they need to do their job in themost effective and efficient way
possible within seconds, almost instantaneous, remove burden,
remove noise and get them focusing more on the on the
customer. You know, as retail moves more
(20:00):
and more touchless, we want to make sure that those experiences
when customers actually are faceto face are the best that they
possibly can be. So the more time that we can
liberate, more processes we can automate, and the more human
interaction we can have. The better that's that's it for
me, I think no. That's wonderful.
Thank you. No, the only the reason I
brought you all in is because I'm always curious.
(20:22):
I always have to ask a closing question.
Is there a question I should have asked that I didn't ask
because you know, is it like I'mnot a specialist in all elements
of frontline and I'm just curious, is there is there
something that normally people ask you that I've totally
missed? If not fantastic.
Thank you so much. But I'm just, I, I have to
finish off with like making sureI've captured everything.
(20:45):
Is there, Chris may be with you?Is there, is there a question
that people always ask you that I've not asked you?
Yeah. The question I get typically
asked is, is the level of activations, how many colleagues
are actually involved in in the platform and things like that.
So I'm glad. I asked the question, why don't
you tell us the level of? Yeah.
So typically we're seeing now kind of about 92% activation
(21:05):
level across across the businessacross 6 1/2 thousand colleagues
and on a we track then are kind of what we call our active
users. That's colleagues that log into
work jam more than a week. And we're averaging about 50%
on, on that, that now. So really pleased with the
progress we're making. This isn't it takes time.
It does take time to get particularly frontline
colleagues. You've got to give them a reason
(21:26):
why. Why do I want to log in this
week? You know, we have 100% active
users when it comes to our storemanagement levels, but it's the
frontline colleagues who sat on a checkout on a Saturday
evening. Why do they want to log into
work jam and see what's what's going on?
And we're on that journey and it's really growing.
That's. Fantastic.
Mark, is there anything from your side?
I think typically I get Mark, that sounds great, but where and
(21:48):
how do we start? It's, you know, it's yeah, we're
a frontline platform that that does a lot, lots of modules that
interoperate seamlessly and thenpeople go blind.
Me, it's comms. Is it task?
Do I look at shift? Do I look at learning?
So, you know, we have to unpack that and simplify it and say,
look in, you know, 6 to 8 weeks,we can have you up and running
(22:08):
communicating with, in Chris's case, 92% of of his workforce.
It's just and we can use, we canuse that as a change enabler for
what comes next. And that's what I say in
response to to that question. That's fantastic, Chris.
Mark, thank you so much for giving up your time and I look
forward to seeing how maybe if you're at NRF US catching up and
seeing how how are you both getting on?
(22:30):
Thanks. Alex.
Good to talk to you. Thanks, Alex.
Thanks.
The key thing about AI is a genetic AI is the ability to
have multiple agents that can connect, talk to one another and
execute intelligent processes. So do things for us, right?
So there is a real benefit there.
(00:24):
Hello and welcome back to the Retail Podcast.
Now, I'm always spoilt when we have a retailer and partner on
the call with us or on the episode with us.
And today is one of those episodes.
So Chris, why don't you start usoff?
Why don't you give us a quick one minute on who you are and
what you do? Yeah.
Hi, Alex. So I'm Head of Store Support for
(00:45):
the Mid Counties Corp. I've been working for Mid
Counties for 28 years now and over half of that time was I was
either a store manager or a district manager running stores
for our food business. So in my role today, I really
feel that I'm best placed now tosupport those stores with what I
know and I hold responsibility for a loss prevention team, our
(01:08):
communications team, our manageroperating model, also
simplification and continuous improvement.
So we counties is one of the leading independent cooperatives
in the UK, got over 750,000 members, 6 1/2 thousand
colleagues. We operate across food, travel,
early years, childcare and also utilities.
But from a food perspective, we mainly operate out of our core
(01:31):
counties have gone up lost to share Worcestershire, Wiltshire
to Shropshire and sort of West Midlands.
And yeah, so really kind of mixed estate lots, lots of
interesting things going on and that's why we were really keen
to look at this kind of solution.
That's fantastic. Thank you.
Mark. Why don't you give us an
overview of who you are and whatyou do?
Hi. Thanks, Alex and hello
(01:52):
everybody. So Mark Williams, Managing
Director for Workjam EMEA, been with Work Jam for four years
now, brought in to set up and lead our European expansion.
Prior to that 16 years with Shell in global retail
operations. I've got a passion for kind of
where technology meets kind of business process and how we
(02:13):
extend that to the all importantfrontline because for me that's
where it really matters. That's where the rubber hits the
road. They're the individuals who are
dealing with the front line customers coming into the store
or into the operation day in, day out.
So without engaging them, without communicating them and
providing them with digital tools to do their job, you don't
tend to get the productivity that you need off what is a very
(02:36):
cost sensitive, cost conscious, typically operating environment.
It's perfect. Chris, I want to start by
casting your mind back because obviously you've been in the
business a long time. When you were looking at the
problem, there must have been early signals or early signs
that the existing system for frontline communication.
(02:57):
And being someone who's come from that world, I understand
that sometimes there is nothing apart from, you know, pen and
paper when people are talking toeach other.
But I was, I'm curious in, in what were those signals that you
saw when prior to all of the transformation that you've gone
through that this way of workingis no longer fit for purpose?
(03:18):
And then if you, if you don't mind, how did that conversation
evolve into a partnership with with Workjam?
Yeah. So what we started to see was a
really sort of disparate frontline that we're just
overloaded with tasks and activities and communications
coming up them in all kinds of different manners, none of which
were particularly productive. And they had to go and search
(03:39):
for those communications. So we really were trying to
start a journey of understand how do we put communications and
tasks into the hand of our frontline colleagues at the time
that they need them for the right people at the right time.
This really started as a bit of a task journey for us.
We were really trying to find a vendor that could support us in
terms of managing our tasks of frontline.
(03:59):
As we went through the process, we realised there was lots of
opportunity to try and bring in a much more sort of virtuous
circle of bringing communications and tasks and all
the kind of things that colleagues would need to find or
to sort 11 place. We realised quite early on that
actually we were really, really tasked hungry as a as a food
retailer in particular, and trying to find a way that
(04:21):
converted tasks and communications in a simple form
to to the frontline colleagues was absolutely vital for us.
So I think that piece of work that we realised quite early on
was that we needed something more than a task provider.
We need something that brought it all together and would
surface to all colleagues at alltimes.
I. Got you.
(04:42):
I'm just curious, how much of the sort of feedback did you get
from the shop floor? How much were they involved in
the process? Yeah.
A lot. So we've done some early, this
was quite early in odds of what we call our simple store
journey. And we were really trying to
understand the kind of complications of for frontline
colleagues, both in food but also in our travel and early
(05:04):
years nurseries. And so we do regular pulse
surveys with our colleagues. So that was a key part of the
information we get back. We hold colleague council
meetings. So this is kind of tends to be
more of our frontline colleaguesrather than managers who would
give us regular feedback as to what was stopping them being
productive. But most importantly, my team
were out there on the ground in the field being side by side
(05:27):
with the team just to really understand what were the the
points of friction, what was causing them issues?
What was stopping them being as productive as they possibly
could be. I.
Got you. Mark, in terms of when you
obviously look at customers thatare similar to sorry yeah to
customers who've had the same challenges as Chris and mid
counties Co-op. What do you feel are some of the
(05:48):
sort of the things that have gone sort of silently by people
haven't really understood what'sgoing on or or the need for
transformation? What was unappreciated by
retailers that have gone on thisjourney?
Yeah. So I think it's two things.
It's it's helping them initiallyunderstand that the frontline is
kind of forgotten in any digitaltransformation.
(06:09):
So in the head office, we all have teams, we all have
solutions and tools that help usdo our day job better or more
effectively and more efficiently.
But that never really penetrateddown to the frontline.
There still tended to be dated standards, dated approaches, Pen
and paper and and a lot of retailers can kind of miss that
(06:31):
or perhaps they hear it, but area little bit in denial.
It's only the forward thinking kind of retailers like like
Chris and the mid counties Co-opthat that really say, OK, I
understand I have a problem here.
I'm I'm going to own that problem and how can I go about
fixing it? And when they get into the how,
how am I going to fix that? That's when the pocket of
values, pockets of value appear,right.
(06:52):
So, you know, yes, there's a productivity gain there.
Oh, look, there's, you know, some time liberation there,
which I can redeploy for more customer facing time, perhaps
talking about an upsell, perhapsincreasing that basket spend, or
perhaps it might be the other way.
Perhaps it might be more efficient and effective
compliance procedures and audits, making sure things like
Natasha's law, health and safetyrequirements are met in a more
(07:16):
timely way and a more controllable way and reportable
way. Again, liberating time.
That time then is kind of of redeployed and, and let's face
it, we're in a particular periodof, you know, of, of almost
chaos, aren't we? I mean, there's been so much
disruption in retail and other industry verticals which we
serve as well over the last sortof 18 to 24 months, months that,
(07:39):
you know, people are now lookingfor that kind of that
productivity gain, that cost saving, that value add, where
they can get it. I got it.
Thank you. Chris.
Coming back to you when what's interesting when I read about
this is something that retailerstry to achieve, but not
necessarily through this type oftransformation.
And that's basically looking at the culture.
(08:01):
And so when you've got such a disparate business, when you
mentioned earlier you've got you've got stores, you've got
nurseries, you've got travel branches, how intentional was it
to sort of achieve A cultural outcome?
And what lessons would you sharewith other retailers who are
actually trying to build community at scale?
I think you're quite right. I think culture was something
(08:24):
that we really, I don't think wegrasped initially.
It's something that we built on over time as we, as we
established work jam into the business.
I think the mistake a lot of businesses make is they think
the technology is going to drivethe culture, but actually the
business drives the culture, that the technology supports the
culture. And I think everyone was looking
for that golden bullet, that work jam would just coming to
(08:46):
the business and suddenly the culture would be exactly how we
wanted it to be. And actually, that's not how it
works at all. It's, it's that tool to enable
us to drive a different type of culture within our within our
business. And I think it was little steps,
you know, understanding, for example, the difference between
what is a task and what is a communication, I think is a
great example. So, you know, the communications
team that worked for me when we actually really analysed it,
(09:08):
when we started putting it through the funnel of work, Yam
was actually 95% of what we sentout was a task.
It wasn't a communication, it was a task.
And we were telling people to dothings all the time.
So we started to break things into buckets of what is a tell
and what is an advice and what is a comms.
And we started to change that. And where it was kind of
borderline, we're trying to tweak it towards the comms
because the comms is more engaging than a tell.
(09:29):
But then when there's a clear, you must do this by this time,
then that would be a task. And then we'd use that
functionality so that that really slowly but surely sort of
changed that, that that culturaldirection of the business where
we tried to make more things more communicated using its
communication rather than the task wherever possible.
And but then also it's really important to try and find
(09:50):
something that worked across central support teams, across
the different trading groups andall the kind of like disparate
outposts of the of the business,I guess.
How does that, I mean, I'm just curious in terms of
prioritisation then in terms of how that has an impact on how
managers are prioritising work or or measuring in what, what
(10:12):
gets sent to stores from head office.
Has that had an impact on that or or not?
Because obviously 95% what was called communication is that is
a huge number. Yeah.
So what it what it's done is allowed us to very much
streamline those activities overover multiple years now.
So it's not been something that we did straight away.
Initially we effectively replicated our paper based
(10:35):
system into digital form and we didn't really change too much.
But that immediately had a lot of upside in terms of being able
to remotely see performance, remotely see things are being
done without having to send people to a store to see that
that work had been completed. Over time, it's allowed us to
really effectively understand when and where people are
completing tasks, why they're and also the sort of the
(10:57):
validity and the value in those tasks being completed because
now we've got better data. If we're not really doing
anything with that data, why didwe ever ask them to do it?
So that really helped us to question that over time.
And actually, we've probably halved our tasks now over the
last year. In fact, we've taken over 3/4 of
a million tasks, annual tasks out of our business.
Is it in the last 12 months? Wow.
(11:18):
OK. That's so I don't know if this
sort of follows on from that point.
But when you when you're when you're both looking at AI
integration and how you're helping colleagues find answers
to questions faster and then to be able to act with confidence.
How do you envision AI sort of in the future?
(11:39):
Or can you talk through what that experience is from the
frontline in terms of how how this is helping frontline
employees with with their query,sorry, with their queries.
Yeah. I mean, I can probably take the
AI question here. So, so yeah, I mean, AI is, you
know, it's I'd say it's in its people would say it's maturing
(12:00):
and that's been around for a little while, but I would say
it's still in its infancy. The key thing about AI is a
gentic AI. It's the ability to have
multiple agents that can connect, talk to one another and
execute intelligent processes. So do things for us, right?
So there is a real benefit there.
In the example that you gave something like work jams AI
agent, it is there solely for the front line.
(12:23):
And that is exactly to do what you said.
It's to give them access to something immediately.
They might not know what it is that they're looking for, but a
few keywords, a couple of asks into the AI agent and they can
link directly to it. It might be a manual, it might
be a process, it might be a follow on education, it might be
a learning management fast trackprogramme and all of that is
(12:45):
great. What's coming next from Work Jam
are all of those other agents aswell.
So when they ask that question about a management referral
programme, it automatically enrols them and unlocks the
training for them to, to start on that particular journey.
And it also unlocks the HR agent, which perhaps flags them
for a fast track or additional increment or a reward and
(13:06):
recognition coming from the HR team.
So AI is going to touch the frontline, I think in a big way.
It's, it's, it's going to blow up in the next 12 to 18 months.
The other key side to frontline AI is all of the VMS, all of the
visual merchandising, all of thevisual merchandising standards,
some of the, you know, optical recognition capability that's
(13:28):
out there today looking products, are they accurate on
the shelf? Do we need to restock?
Can that agent then speak to a stocking agent which will then,
you know, get to the distribution house to send more
stock into that store? Now we're really getting
intelligent and automated processes as a result of a
genetic AI working well together.
That's how I see it evolving. And as I say, we're, we're
(13:50):
starting and leading with our kind of AI agent and then that
will connect out into into othercapabilities.
Chris, I know it's something that you're looking at from from
Work Jam to support you with as.Well, yeah, I think it's the how
it takes it to the next level. So we very much built our
initial rollout of Work Jam withevery core knowledge centre for
example. But it's quite practical, you
know, encyclopaedia of information, but it's quite hard
(14:13):
to maybe pull some of that information out really easily.
So we want to make it incrediblyeasy for the frontline
colleagues just to be able to ask a very simple question and
go directly to the right solution or answer for them, the
right policy, whatever it might be.
I think it's also how it enablesour central teams to be able to
analyse data quick, more quickly.
So for example, quite as retailers, we've got often ask
(14:35):
stores to submit a photo to show, you know, adherence to
some display or something like that.
Then the exciting bit for me is how the AI can analyse the
photos that come in, for example, and just say every
store's compliant with immediateeffect rather than someone
having to sort of have a look and through all that
information, try and understand this.
Some real gains for us there, both in productivity at the
front and done, but also essentially as well.
(14:56):
Looking at the final two questions, when you when you're
looking let's go from the frontline in terms of privacy
and frontline colleagues being worried about their privacy, was
that Chris, is that I'm trying to sort of separate fact from
fiction. What what was, what's the
reality in in the real world where it's been deployed?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
(15:17):
Reality was there was some concerns about that in the early
stages, no doubt at all, becauseit's the first time we'd really
asked other colleagues to join asort of central application on a
on a on mask on a basis. However, the reality was that we
had every individual site, everyindividual travel branch
probably had their own and WhatsApp group, Facebook group
that was completely unmonitored on police from a central
(15:40):
perspective. And you know, anything went on
those. The beauty of being integrated
with work, we have our messagingfacility that works within the
application and we now get thousands and thousands of
colleagues talking to each otheron a monthly basis within
Workjam. And that means it's controlled
as in it won't let them. We don't monitor it, we don't
watch it, we don't need to, but the philtres within it stop
(16:02):
certain things being discussed but also our open in channels.
It means that colleagues are sort of self policing
themselves. So when colleagues talk to
colleagues, they tend to answer each other's questions, they
tend to police each other. We don't very, very rarely get
involved in any discussions thatare going on.
On the application. There was obviously a level of
concern around sort of the bringyour own device conversations of
(16:23):
the stores of concerns that we're going to walk into shops
and everyone's walking around with their phone in their hand
and they're staying at the screen and not talking to
customers. But actually we found completely
the opposite because it's about freeing colleagues up to have
more time to deliver that customer experience.
And, you know, we've really seenthat benefit.
Mark, do you have anything on that?
No, just it's a very familiar story, Chris is kind of, we call
(16:45):
it shadow IT. So we talk about those WhatsApp
channels, we talk about those Facebook pages, unsecure,
unsanctioned with, with with ourproducts and putting everything
into work jam. Now we take care of all of that
in the back end with the data privacy, with all of the
philtres, that profanity philtres and everything else
that's built into that as as well.
(17:06):
So it we actually see see the opposite and people learn more
towards it, thinking I feel a little bit safer and I feel more
secure now. Perfect.
Thanks, Chris. Final, final question and just
my chaotic brain can't sort of break it into two, so I'll throw
it out. That's one question and let you
decide which way you want to answer it in terms of looking at
the future of Frontline and whatwhat they have on their belt as
(17:30):
they used to call it. I'm really curious on on your
thoughts of the future and what that looks like.
And then in the mix, what was the biggest surprise that the
business sort of said that? I don't know.
Was there an unexpected consequence of this
transformation? Yeah.
So in terms of in many ways I see us refining and refining
Work Jam over time, there'll be certain other things that we
(17:53):
bring in. So there'll be we want to bring
in more integration. We want, we want Work Jam to be
the front door for our colleagues for everything in our
in our business. So in fact, they know they log
into Work Jam, they can find outabout where that helpdesk job
has got to. When's that engineer coming to
fix this in my store, you know, where can I get access my
colleague pulse survey? Where can I access any
(18:14):
information that I want to get to?
So there are some more integrations and more work we
want to do, but that's actually reducing the amount of separate
platforms into one hopefully. So it feels it's all under in
one place. But we do want to refine and
refine tasks and communication. So it's really the critical
information at the critical timefor that frontline colleague.
So certainly in the past, you know, you, you would have to
(18:35):
send that everything to everyonerather than it saying this is
relevant to a colleague who has got post office in their shop.
This is relevant to a colleague who has got, you know, every
parcel service in their shop. So only that relevant group of
people would get that relevant piece of information.
And then in terms of the sort ofunintended consequences, I think
that the, the messaging piece I just mentioned, I think was the
(18:56):
big one for us because what we found, and we had a, a couple of
examples where, you know, we hada system crash on a Sunday on a
particular system. And before you know it, there's
a couple of 100 conversations going on within the channels and
all the colleagues are helping each other and fixing it.
And we never had to get involvedin anytime.
And, you know, people telling each other solutions, they've
worked it out for themselves. It's, it's so much quicker and
(19:18):
more efficient than actually ourcentral teams getting involved
in the conversation. So some of those wins have been
really fantastic. That's.
Wonderful. Yeah.
Anything that impact when you see natural conversation from
your frontline, you can't. I'm going to talk fast because
we're going over time and I promise that we'll get it.
Mark your thoughts on the on thefront line of the future.
What's your vision of that? Yeah.
(19:39):
So I think fully informed, I think being able to get what
they need to do their job in themost effective and efficient way
possible within seconds, almost instantaneous, remove burden,
remove noise and get them focusing more on the on the
customer. You know, as retail moves more
(20:00):
and more touchless, we want to make sure that those experiences
when customers actually are faceto face are the best that they
possibly can be. So the more time that we can
liberate, more processes we can automate, and the more human
interaction we can have. The better that's that's it for
me, I think no. That's wonderful.
Thank you. No, the only the reason I
brought you all in is because I'm always curious.
(20:22):
I always have to ask a closing question.
Is there a question I should have asked that I didn't ask
because you know, is it like I'mnot a specialist in all elements
of frontline and I'm just curious, is there is there
something that normally people ask you that I've totally
missed? If not fantastic.
Thank you so much. But I'm just, I, I have to
finish off with like making sureI've captured everything.
(20:45):
Is there, Chris may be with you?Is there, is there a question
that people always ask you that I've not asked you?
Yeah. The question I get typically
asked is, is the level of activations, how many colleagues
are actually involved in in the platform and things like that.
So I'm glad. I asked the question, why don't
you tell us the level of? Yeah.
So typically we're seeing now kind of about 92% activation
(21:05):
level across across the businessacross 6 1/2 thousand colleagues
and on a we track then are kind of what we call our active
users. That's colleagues that log into
work jam more than a week. And we're averaging about 50%
on, on that, that now. So really pleased with the
progress we're making. This isn't it takes time.
It does take time to get particularly frontline
colleagues. You've got to give them a reason
(21:26):
why. Why do I want to log in this
week? You know, we have 100% active
users when it comes to our storemanagement levels, but it's the
frontline colleagues who sat on a checkout on a Saturday
evening. Why do they want to log into
work jam and see what's what's going on?
And we're on that journey and it's really growing.
That's. Fantastic.
Mark, is there anything from your side?
I think typically I get Mark, that sounds great, but where and
(21:48):
how do we start? It's, you know, it's yeah, we're
a frontline platform that that does a lot, lots of modules that
interoperate seamlessly and thenpeople go blind.
Me, it's comms. Is it task?
Do I look at shift? Do I look at learning?
So, you know, we have to unpack that and simplify it and say,
look in, you know, 6 to 8 weeks,we can have you up and running
(22:08):
communicating with, in Chris's case, 92% of of his workforce.
It's just and we can use, we canuse that as a change enabler for
what comes next. And that's what I say in
response to to that question. That's fantastic, Chris.
Mark, thank you so much for giving up your time and I look
forward to seeing how maybe if you're at NRF US catching up and
seeing how how are you both getting on?
(22:30):
Thanks. Alex.
Good to talk to you. Thanks, Alex.
Thanks.
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