Richmond, VA - March 25, 2025 – goHappy, the leader in frontline employee engagement, today announced the results of its Q1 2025 State of the Frontline Worker report based on survey responses from 46,250 frontline workers across the US and Canada. The report highlights the direct correlation between employee engagement and business performance and specifically reveals that businesses with highly engaged frontline employees experience a turnover rate that is significantly lower than the overall average across all industries.

“When frontline workers feel valued, connected, and supported, they not only help businesses combat high turnover rates, they’re also more productive, and drive stronger customer satisfaction and workplace culture,” said Shawn Boyer, Founder and CEO of goHappy. “Our State of the Frontline Worker report quantitatively confirms that employee engagement isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a business necessity.”

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates the cost of hiring a new employee to be $4,700, a financial impact that scales dramatically when considering a business’s annual turnover. goHappy data shows that organizations that prioritize employee engagement are seeing transformational results. Employers with engagement scores exceeding 75% saw a 12-month rolling turnover rate of just 85%, a 14% improvement compared to the 99% turnover rate observed across all customers.

“At Snooze, an A.M. Eatery, we’ve seen firsthand the power that effective employee engagement can have on reducing turnover,” said Jeremy Edmonds, Vice President of People and Culture of Snooze, an A.M. Eatery. “By leveraging goHappy to better understand our engagement score, which was above 75%, it has helped us build and enhance our programs to reduce turnover to well below 85%.”   

Other key findings from the Q1 2025 State of the Frontline Worker Report include:

• The Cost of Disengagement: Only 64% of frontline workers report being engaged, contributing to a staggering 99% turnover rate.
• Food Service Faces Unique Challenges: Just 59% of food service workers believe their managers lead by example, compared to 72% in other industries.
• Leadership Matters: While frontline leaders shape the employee experience, only 63% of employees believe their manager leads by example and creates a trusting workplace.

A Leadership Call to Action
The State of the Frontline Worker report outlines actionable best practices for improving engagement, including fostering open communication, recognizing employee contributions, and investing in leadership development. Solutions such as goHappy’s app-free engagement tools empower employers to collect and act on real-time feedback from their frontline teams.

The goHappy State of the Frontline Worker Series is a quarterly publication that reports on the frontline employee experience, offering valuable insights to help employers build stronger connections with their teams. Each quarterly report focuses on a key aspect of the frontline worker journey such as onboarding, benefits, turnover, and employee engagement, which is the central theme of the current edition.

To download the full report and learn more about how goHappy is transforming frontline engagement, visit https://www.gohappyhub.com/reports/state-of-the-frontline-worker-q125.

About goHappy 

goHappy is transforming how employers communicate and engage with their frontline workers by providing the most inclusive and simple app-free frontline engagement technology. The key to goHappy's success is enabling employers to reach 100% of their frontline employees where they already are - in their text messages. The team at goHappy has been operating in the frontline employee space for over 25 years. Its mission is to help ALL frontline workers feel more valued and connected so they can reach their full potential. In turn, employers not only improve communication to maximize engagement and happiness within their frontline employees, but also benefit from the bottom line impact that those improvements deliver. For more information on goHappy and its suite of frontline employee engagement solutions,  visit www.gohappyhub.com.