Frontline Careers

There are over 55 million frontline workers in the US - people who must be present to do their jobs. From grocery store clerks to warehouse workers, the US frontline workforce is disproportionately BIPOC, with many earning low-wages, receiving poor benefits, and enduring unsafe work conditions. Stuck in these bad jobs, frontline workers face a dire economic outlook.

To address this problem, we are (1) leveraging technology creating a job site that makes it easier for frontline workers to find good jobs and employers and (2) incentivizing companies to earn our "Frontline Friendly" employer recognition, benefiting their bottom-lines and people.

At scale, millions of good jobs will be created across the US and globally as more employers realize becoming Frontline Friendly leads to greater profits and frontline engagement. And, more important, improving the lives, economic futures, access to better health benefits and safety of millions in the BIPOC community.

Frontline Careers aims to connect frontline workers who want more to companies that offer more. Just over 41% of the 55 million frontline workers in the US are Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian-American/Pacific Islander, or some category other than white. Overall, nearly one-quarter of these workers live in low income families (income below 200 percent of poverty).  So not only are frontline workers often overlooked and undervalued, as our own research and existing research shows, many are also severely under paid. Despite their importance and impact on company operations and bottom lines, they are not given the support and opportunities that are so commonplace for employees in other parts of the organization. Our beta platform, currently in development, aims to directly help frontline job seekers identify, connect with, and apply to companies that value and invest in their frontline workforce. In this way, we are working to provide the frontline workforce equitable access to jobs and economic opportunity, companies that provide safer work environments and better health care, as well as pathways to long-term careers.

Frontline Careers is an employer recognition and exclusive job site tailored to the needs and aspirations of frontline workers.  Think Great Place to Work + Indeed + Match.com, but solely with a frontline focus.

First, using our proprietary assessment developed in-house, we evaluate companies to determine whether they are “Frontline Friendly”. By soliciting feedback from their frontline employees, and reviewing company demographic data, policies and benefits, we are able to determine whether an employer provides pathways to fulfilling careers and wealth creation for all of its workers.

Second, although any frontline worker can join our platform, only companies that pass our assessment and earn our certification are granted access.  There they can post jobs and source frontline talent from our member base.

Third, leveraging insights gained through the employer certification process, we provide each frontline member with a curated list of jobs and employers that best meet their unique needs and aspirations.

From a technology standpoint, our solution utilizes a proven .net architecture and machine learning for match recommendations. Feedback from workers hired, as well as retention rates, and other data points will be used to continually train and improve the accuracy of job/company recommendations provided to frontline users.

Our solution (job site + employer recognition) aims to meaningfully improve the lives of frontline workers across the United States.

This group totals more than 55 million in the US, represent more than 40% of all workers in the country, and is more likely to be non-white than the average workforce.

In general frontline workers are underserved through low wages, poor and unsafe work conditions, lack of health care, and lack of career investment or pathways to career stability.

At Frontline Careers understanding the needs of frontline workers, particularly those in the BIPOC community, began with working alongside and leading the very group we tend to serve. These direct coaching and mentoring conversations were the genesis to the Frontline Careers concept.

After the company was launched in early 2020, our team spent months interviewing frontline workers across industries and age groups to better understand their pain points, goals and aspirations. These conversations continue as we design and develop the alpha version of our job site, as well pilot our Frontline Friendly employer assessment with actual clients.  

Based on direct feedback gained thus far from frontline workers, our solution will address their following needs:

1. Greater Transparency - Some frontline workers we have spoken with want to leave their current employer, but are unsure if the "grass is greener" at other companies. They are hesitant to move given this lack of certainty.  The information we provide on companies, will help empower frontline workers to make changes to their careers and give them the ability to take control of their employment journey. 

2. Exposure to Jobs and Career Paths They May Not Have Known About - Oftentimes frontline workers we interviewed knew they were at a job that was not necessarily the "right fit" for their particular skill set and they wanted to find a company that better suited their needs. But even armed with that knowledge, the "where to go next" was sometimes elusive and hard to determine. Our job site utilizes matching algorithms to help discover new career paths and job opportunities workers may not have previously been aware of. It also provides them information on a company's health benefits, work environment, promoting procedures and so much more, allowing them to make an inform and beneficial choice.

3. Better Job, Better Treatment and Companies that Care - The average person spends 1/3 of their life working and requires us to spend precious time away from the people and things we love.  But most people have no choice but to work, so they can sustain themselves and their families. Work should not only be something we do to provide financial stability, it should also be something that is fulfilling. At Frontline Careers, we assess every company that desires to be a part of our platform.  Only companies who provide better jobs, great environments, a diverse workforce, better benefits and so much more can be certified as "Frontline Friendly". These companies will then gain access to some of the top notch frontline talent in this country.  And this benefit actually becomes two fold. If a company is not yet "Frontline Friendly", they will be incentivized to examine their workplace culture and fix it, less they miss out on exceptional talent in a very competitive job market. Examining and repairing their shortcomings will help in turn create more companies that care and increase the number of "good" jobs available for our deserving frontline workforce.

Frontline workers in the US are disproportionately from BIPOC communities, and currently do not have equitable access to good jobs and the generational wealth building opportunities they provide. The story of frontline workers in the US is one of racial inequity.

Our solution utilizes technology to make it easy for frontline workers to access jobs that provide higher wages, safe work environments, and pathways to careers. It also leverages technology to incentivize employers to create more of these good jobs.

In addition, our focus on frontline workers means we are targeting a group that is overrepresented by communities of color.

Our solution has two primary components: employer recognition and job site. And while the job site is currently in the prototype phase, we are actively designing and building out the beta version of the site, while our employer recognition is actively being tested and used with customers.

What makes us different:

1. Business Model - we created not only a job site, but we combined it with employer recognition program. By doing this we are creating an environment where companies are offering their best and workers are benefiting from complete transparency into every company on our platform.

2. Frontline Worker Centric - from our job site to our employer recognition, the heart of what makes our offering different is our focus on the needs of the frontline worker.

3. Intrinsic Needs Based Matching - beyond just skills and experience, we look to match job candidates based on their intrinsic needs.

4. Exclusivity - we limit access to our job site to only certified Frontline Friendly companies. In this way we not only honor our commitment to serving the needs of our frontline workers, we also create a positive incentive for other companies to join their ranks.

5. Success Measures - unlike others in this space, we measure success based on worker outcome (e.g., do they stay at their new job for at least one year, and do they agree with our assessment).

 The pandemic highlighted the disparity between the critical services provide by frontline workers and the level of reward and treatment they receive. Platforms like ours will help give this movement momentum.  Our vision is that one day every frontline worker will work for a Frontline Friendly company, and we see our platform as a key catalyst for the market change to make this a reality.

Our current market focus includes the greater Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston and Dallas metropolitan areas.  We estimate our current reach in these markets to be approximately 3 million frontline workers.

Within one year, we plan to expand our coverage to include all of California and Texas, reaching approximately 8-10 million frontline workers. And possible cover clients in other parts continental US.

Within five years, our employer recognition and job site will cover companies across the entire US, meaning FLC will have the ability to meaningfully impact all 55+ million frontline workers.         

1. Compare median wages and benefits of frontline workers who found jobs on our platform to a similar sample of frontline workers who found jobs in the same cities via other means and companies that we evaluated but did not recognize as FF.

2. Utilizing data from our site, closely track frontline job placements, promotions, and general career trajectories of these individuals 

3. Measure and track unemployment rates over time in relevant underserved communities and identify the extent to which these rates decreased because we connected individuals to jobs at FF companies.

Full-time Staff: 3

Part-time Staff: 2

Interns: 2

Our team is well positioned to deliver our solution given that we are predominately BIPOC (71%), our backgrounds and areas of expertise align well with the problem and solution, and we create significant synergies as a diverse team.  

Our CEO developed the concept behind Frontline Careers, based on his years of experience leading large scale frontline operations. Day after day, he had conversations with frontline workers who felt stuck - they wanted to contribute more to the company. They were eager to learn, develop, and grow. But, despite his attempts to help them, he realized that there was only so much he could do. The company didnt care enough about their employees.  This is why our CEO quit his executive-level position and started Frontline Careers.

Our President and co-founder holds a PhD in industrial/organizational psychology and has over a decade of experience designing, developing, and validating human capital and organizational assessments. He has also conducted large scale workforce development program evaluations for the City of LA.

Our CTO has been the primary backend developer for two successful startups and brings with him not just technical expertise, but an an amazing understanding of the links between product and business. 

Finally, our Chief Creative Officer has years of experience in the non-profit world. Over the years, she has helped an array of organizations design and build their marketing assets. Her capacity for staying focused on only the most important tasks have helped the entire team.

At Frontline Careers, "Beyond Diversity" is one of our values. Why? Because as a largely minority leadership team, we all have experienced first-hand inequity and exclusion in the workplace. It is this experience that drives our commitment to building a truly inclusive, equitable and diverse workplace.

In building our leadership team, our CEO not only sought people who were skilled in specific areas of need, but individuals who brought a diversity of thought and experience to the table. In addition to being gender and racially diverse, our leadership team is collaborative and inclusive, setting a firm foundation and example for the company.

Right now the landscape is perfect for a solution of our type.  All aspects of society have begun to see and really understand the importance of frontline workers.  Business, individuals, and government leadership have begun to recognize how the BIPOC community has been negatively impacted by unfair treatment which has blocked their access to equality in so many areas.  Society as a whole is ready to do more and offer more to many who have worked so hard and yet been overlooked time after time.  We see our solution as a type of social disruptor.  It has the ability to change the way companies package and present their frontline jobs to workers.  If a company has a "Frontline Friendly" work environment they will be certified and subsequently gain access to top notch frontline talent.  In this very competitive job market this can be a difference maker for companies.  The companies that do not have the certification will be incentivized to fix potentially problematic workplace practices in order to also have access to this talent.  By doing this they will in turn create better jobs and better workplace culture and this directly benefits our frontline.  Frontline workers and their culture will be the driving catalyst for how employers structure their business practices and package their job opportunities.  This shift in focus will create a more equitable, safe, and beneficial place for many of our  BIPOC workers on the frontline.

First and foremost, and in general, we are open to partnering with any individual and/or organization interested in changing the conversation around frontline workers.

More specifically, we are extremely interested in partnering with Zeynep Ton and the Good Jobs Institute. We believe that our missions are aligned and that a partnership would help impact more individuals and companies in an even shorter time frame. 

There are about 25 million women frontline workers in the United States. While the percentage of men versus women on the frontline mirrors that of the general population, several large segments of the frontline workforce are female-dominated. In fact, in six major categories of frontline workers—retail, public transportation, trucking/warehouse/postal service, cleaning, home health care, and childcare — women comprise almost sixty-five percent, with some of those industries topping out at over ninety percent. Inconsistent work hours, low wages, and juggling work and home responsibilities are everyday realities for many women, and can negatively impact their growth potential. 

Our solution aims to level the playing field and eliminate many of the obstacles that prevent female workers from achieving the same success and economic freedom as their male counterpoints. Frontline Careers is creating a job board that matches frontline workers with companies that suit their needs. When workers sign up for our job board they are asked a series of matching questions, these questions are then fed into our proprietary matching algorithm which helps us to make sure that the our recommended job matches are a good fit for our female frontline workers.  We listen to what all of our female frontline workers  have to say and what they want and need from their jobs.  We provide a platform for their voices to be heard and the ability for them to set the standard on what is important in their job search.

What if finding the right match was not just something reserved for dating apps or relationships? What if finding the right match could apply to your next job?  This is exactly what we are aiming to do at Frontline Careers.  We will be using both data science and machine learning to make informed and accurate job seeker/employer matches. 

Before a frontline worker can access our job site to search for the next great job, they have to answer a series of questions to help build their employee profile. Based on the answer to their questions we will be able to effectively match them with companies who meet their specific needs. By using our proprietary matching algorithms we ascertain what each individual worker is looking for in their next jobs and future employment opportunities. Armed with this information we are able to match workers with jobs at companies that are a great fit for their particular set of needs.  

Only companies who have been handpicked and assessed by us and meet our “Frontline Friendly” criteria will be placed into the pool of possible employers.  We know where these companies' strengths lie, we know what unique work environments these companies foster, and we know what they offer to the frontline employees.  

Matching people to not only good jobs, but the right jobs helps to elevate their employment situation and can amplify the benefits of having a “good fit” job.  Job seekers can feel confident in the knowledge that the new employer values the same things they hold important, in addition to valuing their frontline workforce.  Employers will gain knowledge that they cultivated a positive work environment which helps to reduce turnover and allows them access to a talent pool to fill their open positions more quickly, thereby directly impacting their bottom line.  Our process aims to remove some of the guesswork when a person is looking for their next job.  Instead of blindly leaping in and hoping your new employer's goals are aligned with your own, job seekers will now have an answer to that question. And at the end of the day a job that fits who you are can become one that is not only fulfilling but long lasting.