Key Takeaways

• Frontline workers are the majority — and the most underserved: In the Fortune 1000, 60% of employees are hourly wage earners. At Home Depot alone, 90% of 500,000 associates are frontline workers. These populations have historically had the least access to personalized coaching and leadership development — and AI changes that equation.
• Real-time, in-the-moment coaching is the most critical frontline use case: Frontline managers face immediate, high-stakes situations — a physical altercation at 2 a.m., an associate ignoring a customer — with no HR partner available and no time to consult a manual. AI coaching can provide culturally aligned, SOP-consistent guidance in real time, exactly when it matters most.
• Customization to company context is what makes AI coaching effective: Both Home Depot and Schneider Electric found that integrating company values, leadership expectations, and role-specific use cases into their AI coaching deployments was the key to meaningful adoption and measurable behavior change.
• The ROI case for frontline AI coaching is real — even when hard to quantify: A 1% improvement in customer engagement at Home Depot is worth $1.5 billion in top-line sales. Tim linked preventable management failures — including a union drive triggered by a poorly handled termination — to the cost of not having AI coaching available. The ROI is visible in what doesn't go wrong, not just what improves.
• Equity of access to AI tools is both a moral and a business imperative: Tina framed frontline AI access as a DEI issue — ensuring that plant managers, shop floor workers, and non-exempt employees have the same opportunity to develop skills, build confidence, and grow as their office-based peers. Rising tide lifts all boats.
• Technology integration is the key barrier — and the key opportunity: Frontline deployment requires meeting workers where they are: on handhelds, point-of-sale systems, and shared devices. Home Depot's vision is to integrate Nadia directly into the handheld devices associates already carry, piggybacking on existing infrastructure investment.

Full Transcript

The Frontline Opportunity: Who Gets Left Behind in AI Adoption

[00:00:00]

Alex: Parker talked this morning about the frontier and the frontline. And I think that so often in our roles, in offices, in front of computers, even when we don't mean to, we gravitate to thinking about the jobs of professionals and the days of professionals. We think so much about those leaders and our succession pipelines.

What we're really excited to talk about here is the frontline. In the Fortune 1000, 60% of the people employed you'd classify as an hourly wage earner — someone in a Home Depot, on a manufacturing line, in a distribution center, a nurse, a restaurant worker. Employed roles, not gig workers.

What we really want to talk about is: how are we bringing the power of AI to these people who have traditionally not been able to get this type of personalized development, personalized coaching — and more than anything, personalized support in really tough moments that they endure in what are probably tougher jobs than any of us have ever had.

Maybe we'll kick off with Home Depot. Tim, I'd love for you to share a little about the culture at Home Depot, and why I now know the obvious answer was that you wanted to pilot in the stores.

▶ Why Frontline Workers Are Underserved by Corporate AI Investments

In the Fortune 1000, 60% of employees are hourly wage earners — yet most enterprise AI and leadership development investments have historically focused on professional, office-based populations. Frontline workers in retail, manufacturing, distribution, and healthcare often face the most high-stakes, high-pressure day-to-day situations with the least access to real-time support, personalized coaching, or development resources. AI coaching platforms like Nadia are beginning to close that gap.

Home Depot: Scaling Leadership Development to 50,000 Frontline Managers

[00:01:41.040]

Tim: At Home Depot, the servant leadership motto is the inverted pyramid. At the top is our customer base, followed by our frontline associates. We think the most critical management position in the company is that frontline leader — the one in the unit who is probably the only manager on duty when they're on shift.

We have 500,000 associates, 90% of whom are frontline. So you start thinking: I've got 50,000 people in a leadership model that I need to touch in a way that lets them reflect the appropriate leadership dynamics in line with our culture. And the challenge is — how do you train 50,000 people?

We bring people into Atlanta, what we call the Store Support Center — not the Corporate Center, because our job is to support that frontline. We put groups through a cultural immersion, three-day program. But how many people can you do that for in a year? Not 50,000. Maybe 2,000.

That's where we got excited. Right before I left, I introduced Nadia to the team. I said: this is scalable. It's something that I could ensure each frontline leader has in their hand — a tool that helps them understand, 'What do I do in this situation?'

▶ How AI Coaching Scales Leadership Development Across Large Retail Workforces

Home Depot faces a leadership development challenge common to large frontline-heavy organizations: with 50,000 frontline managers across 2,500 stores, traditional training programs can only reach about 2,000 people per year. AI coaching through Nadia offers a scalable alternative — putting culturally aligned, role-specific coaching guidance into the hands of every frontline manager, regardless of location or shift, without requiring travel to a central training facility.

Schneider Electric: Expanding AI Coaching from Office Leaders to Plant Managers

[00:03:49.129]

Alex: Tina, Schneider Electric took the opposite approach — thinking about it from the salaried professional side first. Share a little about what you've learned from rolling out Nadia to salaried professionals, and what might be possible when you think about frontline roles.

[00:04:13.240]

Tina: We have around 12,000 to 13,000 managers overall. Of those frontline, it's almost half. We're 160,000 employees, all over the world — a third in the Americas, a third in Europe, a third in Asia. We're a French-headquartered company.

We probably took a more top-down approach, and we're in earlier stages compared to Home Depot. But I just learned from the Valence team yesterday: we signed a contract to extend our partnership on the AI coaching side to all our managers. We started with 2,000 office leaders for testing, but now we're really tackling frontline — plant managers specifically. In the Americas alone, we have over 100 plants. Those plant managers will be critical in getting augmented support through Valence.

Part of our overall people transformation is this notion of leader as coach. It's not a new idea — Tim, you spoke about servant leadership, which has parallels. The whole idea is shifting from command and control — even in a very efficient supply chain and factory environment — toward coaching, learning, and skilling. An AI leadership coach plays a really nice complement to that mission.

▶ How Schneider Electric Is Extending AI Coaching to Frontline and Plant Managers

Schneider Electric began its AI coaching deployment with approximately 2,000 office-based managers and has since expanded to cover all managers globally — including plant and frontline managers across more than 100 facilities in the Americas. The expansion reflects a broader people transformation strategy centered on shifting from command-and-control management to a coaching culture. AI coaching is positioned as a scalable tool to support that cultural shift at every level of the organization.

In-the-Moment Coaching: Real Frontline Scenarios That Demand Immediate Support

[00:05:58.620]

Alex: When you think about what these leaders — managing hourly workforces, in stores opening at 4:30 a.m., running through midnight — what does that day-to-day look like? And what did they need from a coach? Because it's so different from what someone managing professionals would need. Tim, share a little about what that looks like and why you're so excited for Nadia to help with those challenges.

[00:06:56.560]

Tim: We run 24/7, 365. The store opens at 6 a.m. and closes at 10 for the customer, and then after 10, we recover the store. 2,500 stores, probably another 250 distribution centers running at the same level. There's usually one manager on duty.

Let me paint a scenario. It happens at 2:00 in the morning — mid-shift for the night crew. An associate gets in an argument with another associate. Then there's a physical altercation. The manager in that case has probably got two years' experience. They've never had a fight in the receiving area. They also have a late truck that showed up, freight came in late. Two people called out on the night crew. Do they run overtime or not? The store's going to open at 6 a.m. whether they fix it or not.

That assistant manager thinks, 'I'll call my boss.' Not many bosses are up at 2:00 in the morning. There's no HR partner available. They can't run to an office and pull up an SOP — the guys are fighting right now. That immediacy is where we think of coaching on a much bigger scale. You have to be able to say, 'Here's what you do' — and it's aligned with SOP, aligned with our culture, reduces risk. That's coaching in the minute. If they don't deal with that effectively, there's no way they're thinking about growing their career or developing skills to move to the next level.

Another example: an associate walks past a customer on the floor and doesn't say, 'What are you working on?' — which is the Home Depot approach, not 'Can I help you?' Open-ended, not closed-ended. I'm a manager, two years in, probably just promoted from that same associate role. This is a person I know. Do I address them? A, do I turn and run because I'm afraid? Do I say, 'What the hell are you doing?' Or do you say, 'Nadia, what should I do?' If you can get in-the-moment, real-time coaching, think about the dynamic it changes for that interaction. And from a business standpoint, that associate — coached effectively — will engage the customer next time.

We have a close rate at Home Depot of somewhere around 60%. That means 40% of people who come in leave without buying. A 1% increase is worth $1.5 billion in top-line sales. We do 20,000 transactions per week per store. If I give one more transaction per store — just 1% — that's the opportunity. That's why we got excited about Nadia. It gives me a scalable tool to do that.

▶ Why Real-Time AI Coaching Is a Game-Changer for Frontline Leadership

Frontline managers face high-stakes situations — workplace conflicts, staffing emergencies, difficult customer interactions — with no HR partner available and no time to consult a manual. At Home Depot, a manager encountering a 2 a.m. altercation in the receiving area needs immediate, culturally aligned guidance, not a three-day training program. Real-time AI coaching through Nadia provides in-the-moment support that aligns with company SOPs and values, helping managers make the right call under pressure — and driving measurable business outcomes.

[00:11:00.279]

Tina: I love those use cases because it's all about practitioners. Most of us have to bring vision and land it on the ground.

From a year and a half of working with office managers, a couple of things I want to bring to plant managers. First: use case matters. When we first rolled out Valence, it was kind of a free-for-all — fun, everyone was experimenting. But it wasn't until we started feeding the model with Schneider-specific things — company values, leadership expectations, specific use cases — that we saw real results. And we learned from the data: when performance management time came around, when career conversations were happening, we saw spikes in usage for those use cases. We want to bring that to plant managers on the shop floor.

The other thing: we've been on a binge of digital and AI training — prompt-a-thons, classroom sessions. I'm exhausted by them. And we already know prompting is, in some way, getting there in terms of obsolescence. Our plan for blue-collar and plant managers is to make sure upskilling is material — what are you building? What are you learning? How can you apply it in your role? We believe that using an AI coach is the best way to actually build digital and AI skills versus classroom prompting.

And a big piece of my role is on the DEI and inclusion side. Equity and access to tools like this is super important. People spoke earlier about democratization. If AI is used responsibly — with that great power comes great responsibility — it really makes a difference. Whether you do it with a smaller population and pilot first, or at the scale Tim is talking about, the cultural message you send and the upskilling across all levels of manager or employee matters enormously.

[00:14:05.240]

Tim: Integrating the culture is so critical. How would you make a decision in line with the corporate values or the purpose of the company? I agree 100%.

Making the ROI Case: What the Cost of Not Coaching Really Looks Like

[00:14:18.663]

Alex: Both of you in your talent roles have gotten pressure from the CFO and CEO around proving ROI. As we go to these larger, deeper populations where they have such a big impact on the bottom line — how would you both articulate to your peers and executives how you think about the ROI of enabling those frontline managers?

[00:15:07.899]

Tina: It's a sensitive topic and a hard conversation. I don't want to sugarcoat it — we do talk about workforce productivity and efficiency. Management and the board are interested in it. We're experimenting with AI augmenting or supplementing human-to-bot-to-agent processes in supply chain, finance, accounting, marketing, HR. Schneider Electric is not leading in that space — we're learning and experimenting.

But the ROI narrative isn't only about workforce efficiency and FTE reduction. We also tell the strategic narrative: enhancing impact, enhancing productivity — not just for efficiency, but for augmentation. We're in the energy tech space, and our business has grown significantly because of data centers. We make the cooling, we make the software supporting that growth. That, by definition, is changing every day. So the value proposition of AI helping people upskill and reskill is not just talking points — it's real. And it can complement the conversation about workforce productivity and efficiencies.

[00:17:09.460]

Tim: Our founder Bernie Marcus said: 'If you take care of the people, they'll take care of the customer, and everything else takes care of itself.' Our CFO did not go to that school. With him, it's hard to point to a direct return. There's no number I can show where 'this store did X, and therefore this was the outcome.' But what you can show is use cases — and the cost of not doing it. And those are real.

I had a union campaign in a store because a junior manager terminated a long-tenured associate for poor attendance. Come to find out, she was a single mom in an abusive relationship who had left with three children. The attendance issue was entirely in that last six months. Culturally, we would hope a manager would say, 'This isn't like you — what's going on?' The store knew. People knew. And I ended up with a union drive. Fortunately, we won.

But the message is: if she had Nadia, could Nadia have flagged it? 'This isn't like Tracy. Have you asked Tracy what's going on? Before you implement the rule as written, maybe this is a time for an exception. Ninety percent of the time you follow the rule; ten percent of the time you make judicious exceptions — and this is the right time.' That's where AI coaching can add real empathetic value. When I think about financial results, I can point to cases where management failure led to real costs. I can point to opportunities where better leadership drives volume. And then there's a trust factor you have to go with.

▶ How to Build a Business Case for AI Coaching for Frontline Managers

The ROI of AI coaching for frontline managers is often most visible in what doesn't go wrong. At Home Depot, a poorly handled termination of a long-tenured associate — one an AI coach might have flagged as an exception worth investigating — led to a union organizing drive. Tim frames the ROI case in two directions: the cost of management failures that AI coaching could have prevented, and the revenue opportunity unlocked when frontline leaders are consistently better equipped to engage employees and customers.

Solving the Technology Access Problem: Meeting Frontline Workers Where They Are

[00:19:21.480]

Alex: A lot of why we start with office populations is that it's a little easier — everyone is already fluent with technology, using Nadia on a laptop in a Microsoft ecosystem. When we get down to the frontlines, we're dealing with so many different pieces of technology: point-of-sale, handhelds, portals. All of these different modalities, people don't have consistent access. Can both of you speak to why it's worth going through that challenge — why it's so important that we're not leaving the frontline as AI have-nots?

[00:20:38.500]

Tina: For me, this is bigger than Nadia — it's about digital and AI access broadly. Back to my head of DEI role: it's about equity and leveling the playing field and equal chance for growth. Growth and skills may not look the same in a plant shop floor environment as in an office building, but we are all humans, and we all want to grow. We all want to grow the company. Equity of access to AI tools is just common sense and smart business. Rising tide lifts all boats. There's a set of fundamental AI and digital skills that everyone needs, whatever they're doing.

[00:21:54.599]

Tim: Every associate on the floor at Home Depot has a handheld device. Today, we have basic product knowledge on that — if you ask an associate about installing a water heater, they can pull up the item list you'd need. I see Nadia the same way, and actually more impactful. They're going to have a phone. If they ask 'How many items do we have in a particular SKU?' they can scan the barcode, take a picture, it all pops up. We've already made that infrastructure investment. I think we could piggyback on it — and it would make so much more sense.

▶ How Enterprises Can Deploy AI Coaching to Frontline Workers Without New Hardware

Deploying AI coaching to frontline and hourly workers doesn't require new device infrastructure. At Home Depot, every associate already carries a handheld device used for inventory and product knowledge lookups. Tim's vision is to integrate Nadia directly into those existing devices — piggybacking on an infrastructure investment already in place. This approach lowers the barrier to frontline AI adoption significantly and positions AI coaching as a natural extension of tools workers already use.

[00:22:46.759]

Alex: Well, thank you both for sharing your experiences and wisdom. And thank you all for staying with us — a couple more sessions, and then it's time for cocktails.

Tim: Nice job.

Tina: Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Tim.