Page 69 - Cyber Defense eMagazine August 2024

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Fixing this situation means mending the broken lines of communication between HR personnel and
frontline workers — what I call the Frontline Disconnect. And this simply cannot happen until frontline
workers have access to frontline-catered versions of the digital HR tools that have so radically overhauled
desk-based work in the last decade.

In my time observing countless frontline workplaces, I've been shocked to discover that offboarding
procedures have gone unchanged for decades. Where offboarding processes for desk workers have
been almost entirely digitized, many frontline workplaces — construction sites, restaurants, warehouses
— still live in a pen-and-paper world. Reducing insider risk means bringing frontline work into the 21st
century — making life easier for both HR personnel and frontline workers.

Notably, recent technological developments give employers the chance to engage in a kind of pre-
offboarding. By deploying mobile surveys and using AI-enhanced sentiment analysis, employers can now
determine well in advance when a particular employee might be on the way out and intervene accordingly.
If that employee ultimately chooses to leave anyway, they will nonetheless depart with a much more
positive relationship to your business.

This speaks to the critical function of empathy in an insider risk context. Even under the best conditions,
frontline work can be unbelievably stressful, and employers are incumbent on not letting that negative
sentiment transfer over to the company itself. It's a delicate balancing act but an essential one. Given the
average cost of an insider incident, getting it right should be a priority.

About the Author

Cristian Grossmann, the author of The Rise of the Frontline Worker, is a
tech entrepreneur whose company Beekeeper has raised $196.5M in
funding and supplies its mobile productivity and collaboration platform to
some of the world’s biggest and best-known organizations, including
Heathrow Airport, Domino’s Pizza, and Hilton Hotels. Cristian, a former
frontline worker himself, understands first-hand the technology that is
required to make the frontline workforce more effective. Prior to founding
Beekeeper, he worked for Accenture on high profile international projects
in the field of IT Strategy for the financial and public sectors. Cristian
studied Chemical Engineering and got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering,
both at ETH Zurich. Before moving to beautiful Zurich, he was born and
raised in an entrepreneurial Swiss-Mexican family in Mexico City. Cris can
be reached via email at [email protected] and at our
company website https://www.beekeeper.io/company/.

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