As part of my role at crm.hr.com I like to hang out with other smart people, so I joined the www.workforceinstitute.org (funded and sponsored by www.kronos.com). Unlike other think tanks, this one is solely focused on the hourly worker or distributed worker. This in itself is interesting because it is a very small niche but one that serves a very large population base and is key to organizational productivity - but very problematic. Think of all the retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation professionals who are paid when they work, i.e., not on an annual salary. Although Kronos, with their workforce management solution and recent acquisitions of Deploy and Unicru, “own” this market for time and attendance, recruitment, scheduling, and absenteeism management, not many pure research or best practices have been developed and shared to help HR and operational managers improve the recruitment and retention of this workforce. A couple of interesting things have recently occurred in this space.
1) As one of Kronos’s top three missions, they are focused on developing this solution and research (with the Workforce Institute) for the hourly / front line worker. These best practices will be shared in a book that we are developing and should be very valuable.
2) A firm that resides just north of HR.com, called www.insightu.com has managed to build a robust, scalable SaaS offering for front line training and productivity tools to help improve employee retention as well as overall corporate productivity.
So here is my story on how this relates to many of us …
As you all know I have five kids (www.mcgraths.biz), two of whom are just entering the workforce. Hailey (15) has recently started at a local golf course, which in itself is ironic as I always made my kids help me in the gardens and paid them more than she makes at the local course. Her interview process was more about hockey with my husband than anything she has to contribute to the job. No mention of salary, what she would be doing, when she would start or anything that a mom would deem important. Except for the 6 am starts … she likes the job and the people she works with a lot. I figure the course employs about 50 people throughout the year, most of course seasonal. She has been there just over a month. The course has a time clock, a very well written policy and procedure manual, a good culture and good jobs for kids. She also likes and respects her boss. But some simple things like … a schedule, a pay stub or notification that she has been paid (other than money is showing up in her account) and some sort of expectation could potentially help her to be a very engaged employee. She was really upset that she showed up on Saturday at 6:15 a.m. but the crew started at 5:30 a.m. and no one told her. Maybe it’s training or maybe it’s a communication gap but what dawned on me is that her manager is a pretty good guy but like the majority of front line managers, he probably has not had any formal training on retention, on building engagement. In fact, he is probably like the majority of front line managers and just trying to do his damn best with the talent and resources he has been given. Imagine what a little training could do but in reality, he probably thinks these hourly workers are disposable. … See a good article on this on the Workforce Institute site http://www.workforceinstitute.org/guest-blog-frontline-employees-are-expendable.htm.
My other daughter Katie just turned 14. For her birthday she really wants a job. She wants this so I don’t book her into camp all summer as I refuse to let her sit at home all summer on www.facebook.com and her cell phone. Recently we went to fill out applications at some local brand name employers (Tim Horton’s, Wendy’s, Zellers, Sobeys, Great Canadian Super Store, Cineplex, etc.) all of which are very big firms with thousands of hourly workers and they’re all hiring and advertising. No one accepted resumes, only Cineplex wanted her to apply online and all the others had manual application forms (no resume required). To date, she has had one call back (Wendy’s) and no further acknowledgements. Wendy’s came within 24 hours. Very impressive.
Today was Katie’s interview at Wendy’s. The interviewer lost her application and made her rewrite it while they waited. They asked her age (illegal in Canada) and then told her they cannot hire 14 year olds because it is against child labor laws. Also not true.
So in this case the only firm that follows up, can’t nail the interview. Sometimes I wonder if all this technology is really working. It sure wasn’t in any of the stores we visited and even if it was, if the manager is not trained properly in interviewing skills, how many people are they losing in this process?
Looks like our managers dealing with hourly recruitment and field recruitment need help from HR. More training, more structure, more communication…So I ask do you know what your field managers are doing? Maybe a secret shopping / job application mission is required . You maybe shocked at the outcome.
In regards to my last blog, I guess no one was at EDS. The recent announcement of their acquisition by HP is very interesting. HP who this year surpassed IBM in revenue in terms of technology firms will now pull further away and has the potential to be the first 200B firm in the technology space.
