What happened
Dayforce has released new research on frontline operations, as reported by Talent Canada. The survey covered more than 5,600 managers, executives and frontline workers at organizations with at least 100 employees in Canada, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Hanover Research ran it online from March 26 to April 13.
The main finding is that frontline work runs on improvisation. 74 per cent of frontline workers say they use manual workarounds at least sometimes, and 90 per cent say they find ways to fill open shifts themselves. 65 per cent of executives and managers say shift-level disruptions hurt financial or operational performance at least moderately. 45 per cent of frontline managers say those disruptions drive overtime.
The human cost is just as clear. 89 per cent of frontline workers and managers say shift-level issues hurt their well-being, and 71 per cent have considered leaving. Only 42 per cent of frontline workers say leaders understand their challenges, down from 62 per cent in 2024. Dayforce sells workforce software, so its answer is real-time visibility. Still, 74 per cent of executives and managers say many of these disruptions are avoidable with better real-time information. The report does not give a Canada-only breakdown.
Why it matters if you are hiring
This is a retention and capacity story before it is a hiring story. If 71 per cent of the people running your shifts have thought about leaving, your next vacancy may already be forming. Every exit means recruiting, training and a stretch of overtime to cover the gap, which feeds the same problem.
The roles most exposed are shift supervisors, team leads, schedulers and payroll or timekeeping staff. They absorb the fixes when scheduling, time and pay systems fall short. Managers who spend hours each week firefighting have less time to coach new hires, and new hires are the ones who leave first.
Treat the numbers with care. This is vendor-commissioned research and the answers are self-reported. But the pattern is familiar to anyone who has hired for plants, warehouses and service operations: when leaders cannot see the daily workarounds, they underestimate what the job asks of people.
One thing to do this week
Ask each frontline supervisor to list the five manual fixes they made most often last month. Then pull your overtime hours and unfilled shifts for the same period. Put the two side by side. That shows whether you have a systems problem, a staffing-level problem or both, before you post the next job.
Traverse Staffing helps employers across Canada and the US find experienced supervisors, operations coordinators and contract frontline-support talent, so a vacancy gets covered by someone who can step in without adding to the workarounds.