I’ve worked in large and small organizations and noted the stratification in the workforce. In my last large employer, the janitors were overwhelmingly African American, the nurses Philipino and Hispanic, and the MDs were often Asian. Now I read in Bloomberg that CEO’s spend 3% of their time with their frontline workers.
“A study of how CEOs manage their time by two Harvard Business School luminaries, Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria, found that, on average, CEOs spend just 3% of their time with frontline workers, 6% with customers and 72% in meetings: 3 versus 72!”
This speaks to me of an inequality of attention. Management experts and researchers are reporting on the costs of this neglect.
In “The High Cost of Neglecting Low-Wage Workers” in the May-June edition of the Harvard Business Review, Joseph Fuller of Harvard Business School and Manjari Raman, another HBS professor, highlight several ways of improving management of frontline workers (reported in Bloomberg):
# Get to know your workers. The level of ignorance is astonishing. Companies don’t realize that low-wage workers want to stay with them. Fifty-one percent of the workers they surveyed had been with their company for four years or more and 47% said that they would be very likely to recommend it to a friend. They don’t realize the premium that low-wage workers place on location in choosing their jobs: When asked why they changed jobs in the past, 64% cited greater convenience in getting to work, compared with 43% who cited pay.
# Understand the business case for investment. Companies focus on the overt cost of investing in skills while ignoring the hidden cost of churn — that is, hiring and onboarding new employees, paying overtime to existing staff to fill in unexpected gaps and resorting to staffing agencies to provide just-in-time workers. Fuller and Raman point to the example of the Walt Disney Co., which launched an ambitious education program — Disney Aspire — that allows full- and part-time workers of more than 90-days standing to earn a degree or high school diploma or to acquire a vocational skill with the company paying 100% of the tuition costs up front and reimbursing them for fees and books. More than 14,000 hourly employees are enrolled in the course and more than 2,800 have been promoted internally after gaining qualifications.
# Improve communication with frontline workers. Three practices are particularly productive: offering and publicizing career pathways, detailing opportunities to improve skills and providing mentorship. Chipotle Mexican Grille Inc. makes a point not only of promoting from within (80% of its leaders have risen through the ranks) but also publicizing how much various grades of workers can earn in salary and compensation. Yet a striking number of companies don’t bother to offer any upward paths to frontline workers whatsoever, reserving those to salaried workers.
# Collaborate with other companies. Small companies that lack the gigantic resources of Disney can band together to address the problems of their frontline workers. Mark Peters, the CEO of Butterball Farms, a producer of butter and margarine, has created a non-profit consortium of 25 companies, called The Source, to provide low-wage employees with advice on secure housing, food assistance, heath care, transport and education…
# Pay more attention to “diverse” groups. Big supermarkets such as Walmart Inc. in the US and Waitrose in Britain have enjoyed significant success with older workers. This has been predicated on taking into account the unique problems such workers face: making it easy to take unscheduled leave, to deal with family tragedies, or take long holidays (called “Benidorm leave” in Britain after a popular Spanish holiday destination), to account for the retired status of many of their contemporaries. Neurologically diverse people or ex-offenders may also provide significant new pools of workers.
# Make scheduling as predictable as possible. Sudden changes in schedules can be both expensive and disruptive for poorer workers who don’t have their own cars or who must come up with someone to look after dependents at short notice.
# Don’t diss your employees. Zeynep Ton reports that one of her colleagues who signed up for a frontline job was given just two pieces of advice: “turn up on time and don’t steal.” Amazon is notorious for measuring the amount of time employees in its fulfillment centers spend in lavatory breaks. In a generous spirit the company once thanked workers for coming in on a holiday by giving them a goody bag containing a soda and chocolate bar — but only if they hit their production target. No wonder its hourly associates reportedly suffer from an annual turnover rate of 150%.
Over recent decades, companies have made impressive progress on improving the management of knowledge-workers — understanding their needs, making it easier for them to work flexibly and providing them with the training that they need to progress up the career ladder. It is time to apply the same understanding to the hewers of wood and drawers of water on whose bent shoulders the edifice rests.”