In an uneven economic climate where myriad factors have made change the only constant, one message to employees seems universal across business leaders: Do better.
Leaders expect employees to produce more, increase efficiency and maximize impact — particularly on the front lines. Many leaders, though, forget or fail to build the necessary cultural engagement to motivate employees and unlock that discretionary effort.
But performance missives without culture, collective purpose and the tools to get the job done fall flat with the workers that former United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz says are critical to operational excellence: the front line.
“Essential workers are the first to detect bullshit a mile away. Excellence is the outcome of the belief they have in you as a leader, and you earn their belief with action,” Munoz said in a recent interview.
The Frontline Is Where Performance Lives or Dies
I had the opportunity to work alongside Munoz as he transformed United Airlines from the inside out, aligning a largely disgruntled 85,000-person workforce whose discontent was hemorrhaging into the customer experience.
In doing so, Munoz had a composite audience in mind – the guy with the wrench.
“When mechanical issues delay a flight, it’s not the middle managers with the desk jobs who fix it. It’s the guy with the wrench,” Munoz told me as we traveled from O’Hare to Newark in October 2015, part of a multi-hub charm offensive tour.
How fast he moves, how motivated he is to apply his very best work at that exact moment with purposeful precision can be the difference as to whether the flight gets out on time, Munoz said.
The domino effect of the mechanic’s discretionary effort can determine whether the plane connects to the next one to take off, whether the crew reaches its next assignment, whether the airline reaches its on-time departure goals, whether the customers choose United for their next flight and whether the company’s revenue trajectory meets investor expectations.
With a great deal of reverence for blue collar and frontline workers, Munoz said he knew that unlocking operational excellence began with listening to essential workers and understanding what they needed to feel connected to corporate mission with the tools to perform their jobs.
This was the first of many trips I would take with him over the next several years, which always included an impromptu stop to the inner canal of airport operations, the place where Munoz said the real work was done, where he would pull up a folding chair for an unscripted listening session
Culture Is Infrastructure, Not a Perk
In those days of traveling with Munoz, making our way from the gate to curbside pickup often took nearly an hour. Aviation’s new Elvis had entered the building. Gate agents cheered. Wheelchair assistants stopped for selfies.
This kinetic energy was about more than high-fives and fist bumps; it was part of long, intentional campaign to build operational excellence through a unified, purpose-driven culture campaign.
“Culture,” Munoz said, “can either be quicksand or the scaffolding of an operating system.”
Most Frontline Workers Don’t Feel Like They Belong to the Company
Nowhere is that truer than for frontline workers, who often feel far removed from corporate headquarters. A 2025 survey by Workvivo by Zoom said 87% of frontline workers are unsure whether company culture applies to them. Forty-two percent said company leadership wasn’t good at communicating with them, while 69% said they wanted to better understand company strategy and what it means for their roles.
Culture is a critical piece of the operations framework that ultimately delivers the financial and efficiency metrics investors prioritize. Leaders who ignore culture, particularly in its power to cultivate discretionary effort from the frontline, are leaving a critical tool untouched in the management toolbox.
Why This Moment Is Different
Frontline workers are disproportionately affected by myriad societal dynamics – economic uncertainty, inflation, decreased social services and an education system that is only just beginning to build pipelines for vocational skills, particularly those being fueled from rather than threatened by AI.
A recent study from The How Institute said 94% of employees believe the need for moral leadership is more important than ever, but that only 6% of CEOs and 9% of managers deliver the kind of purpose-driven leadership that helps scale human contribution to create value.
Companies that bring people together around shared purpose, Munoz echoed, particularly succeed together. Critical to that environment is transparent, authentic and consistent leadership to neutralize the agita felt from external forces at play and cultivate internal unity.
“People are worried about their money, worried about their future, worried about technology,” Munoz said. “In today’s polarized times, the concept of consistency is the real courage.”
Beyond the culture scaffolding’s impact on singular company’s success, the U.S. economy would broadly benefit from greater engagement with and celebration of essential workers.
The GDP Cost of Ignoring Essential Workers
A June 2025 Aspen Institute study found that that U.S. GDP would be 10% higher if the essential economy had kept pace.
The essential economy – which includes sectors like agriculture, construction, energy, manufacturing, transportation, logistics and repair – contributes $7.5 trillion dollars in output per year, 27% of the U.S. GDP, according to the institute. However, from 2015 to 2023, productivity in the white-collar economy rose 28% while productivity in the essential economy decreased.
Among the many solutions the Aspen Institute recommends for boosting essential economy productivity is bolstering human capital by investing in employees through ongoing learning and development, salary increases and rewards.
The fear of unemployment due to obsolescence is just one factor that could be driving potential hires away from essential roles. A January 2026 University of Michigan study found 62% of consumers expect unemployment levels to worsen this year.
Meantime, Republican political strategist Bruce Mehlman noted in his Age of Disruption Substack that consumer sentiment among blue collar workers, which the Michigan study placed at 51 percent, is at a record low – below the Regan Recession of 1982, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, peak COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2022’s inflation spike.
The anxious essential worker is also a student unlikely to upskill, and a consumer unlikely to spend.
Engaging your frontline as part of an operational system doesn’t just unlock discretionary effort; it spurs a domino effect to bolster talent pipeline and consumer confidence that will build a more sustainable business.
Today’s CEOs must connect all employees to the business mission and strategy through authentic, consistent, value-driven communications to earn the performance that will deliver the results investors want to see.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
