How Far to Push Front Line Employees for Productivity

Just finished watching Undercover Boss preview here.

Basically, the CEO of a major company is hired to do the work of his own frontline employees and experiences an epiphany. He realizes that cost cutting productivity measures implemented from the top down aren't always the most humane way to improve production.

One message from psychohkittie on the CBS board:Money trumps the value of an employee in their eyes and will only make a "change" when forced to do so, e.g. having a camera in their face in order to make themselves look compassionate. I mentioned in another post that I may give it another show or two but don't think I can without getting frustrated with the fact that 1) show is scripted 2) it tugs on the emotions of those who are frustrated at work and struggling to make ends meet during a hard economy
and another viewpoint from gozzaronI own a business with several offices and 8 employees. I have always strived to be a great boss. It is nice to see a show focused on the human factor in business. It is easy to become so large that you forget those that helped you get there. We can never forget the front line factor. Great concept- Great show!

Modern Organizational Behavior Theory suggests high level managers should frequently spend time doing work alongside frontline employees.

That's what happens when they hire and promote people to run the company that didn't start from the bottom or have any idea what front line employees deal with. The large company I work for now has a senior executive staff where most, if not all, has spent some time on the front lines of operations.

Things from the show that I hope they actually change:
1) Don't make women trash collectors pee in a can just to meet their productivity goals.
2) Make that one recycling center manager peak his head out of his office to greet new employees. No one should be too good to greet new employees, especially just at that level.
3) Realize that having one lady do all those tasks is asking for one big disaster when she calls in sick one day. Sounds like they hired a couple more people from the notes at the end of the show.

Anyone who saw the preview for the trailer for the next episode looking forward to reindeer games??? (sarcastic...not cool at all)

Didnt watch...
Did it make the front line employees look like tirless martyrs or did it show some as disconnected as well?

Front line employees of most national corporations are disconnected from the top and do not care about the image they present to the end customer...

The top poops on the bottom, the bottom is jealous of the top, and the customer deals with apathetic vomits all around...

But hey, if we can save 50c on toilet paper, it's better than a small local store, right?

I watched it and really thought it was a good concept.

The first CEO was a really sympathetic character and seemed like a genuinely caring and nice guy. I think the show may not work as well in future weeks if the wrong CEOs are chosen. I also like how they explained the premise and how they were justifying having cameras follow the newb guy around (I think some reality shows are really devoid of reality b/c everyone knows what's going on).

I think there might have been some selection bias with respect to the people who were chosen to work alongside the CEO. I would imagine that a company like Waste Management would have significant turnover but all of the people he worked with had been there 5-10+ years so are probably the types who are more likely to have a positive attitude, be patient in training new employees, etc. The one guy who didn't come out smelling very well as the recycling center manager - I don't think he's long for that job any more.

Pet peeve of mine: corporations that hire from places like McKinsey, Bain etc rather than developing their own talent. More often than not the results are something like this:
- New hire has minimal experience managing people but is given a position with a lot of responsiblity.
- New hire, although fairly smart, tends to be arrogant, does not listen well, and thinks they know all the answers.
- New hire does not know how to get things done in the context of the company's culture.
- New hire is great at giving powerpoint presentations, not so great at executing.
- New hire comes in, spends two or three years making a mess of their organization, moves on to another company, and is replaced by somebody else from a top-tier consultancy. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Next week, Hooters CEO goes undercover. Pretty disturbing in the preview where they showed a manager making waitresses eat from a plate like animals so they can go home early.

WillyWah said: 1) Don't make women trash collectors pee in a can just to meet their productivity goalscould be a new revenue stream

HumDoHamaraDo said: Next week, Hooters CEO goes undercover. Pretty disturbing in the preview where they showed a manager making waitresses eat from a plate like animals so they can go home early.

Apparently no one is ever supposed to get fired on this show, but it seems like this could be a case where it is justified.

I agree that this is a show that needs to be firmly grounded in reality to work, but I don't think it is. How many people personally know and give hugs to their garbage person? Of course there is going to be selection bias with the employees they pick, and of course they are going to act more positive and hard-working then normal with the camera on them.

Then he gives the one over-worked women a promotion and tells her to hire two more people to do the job she was doing before. That's great for her, but how many other employees in the company are in the exact same position as her? Is anything going to change for them?

They are just hour long paid commercials for businesses that feel that they have public image or public relations problems.
WM = We need monopolistic municipal flow control ordinances and contracts where we charge you a fortune for mandatory garbage service because we have all these nice employees and some of them are dying!
Hooters = We do not condone the objectification of women, hostile work environments and we care about these mandatorily scantily clad, hot, lucious babes that serve you overpriced chicken and I'm sure we will learn that some of them are dying. We will also learn that if you don't go to Hooters, you don't care about empowering women and little Suzie will likely die.

jakemoney said: That garbage lady needs to stop hugging folks on her route and just pickup trash; maybe then she'd have time to use a tiolet rather than a tin can. I agree this is strictly a PR deal and has very little to do with actually relating to "front-line" employees. In what way were these front-line employees being pushed too far? Every company is pushes employees to operate efficiently and reduce costs. Big Shock.

What really struck me as inefficient was that she only stops at 350 houses per day. Probably cause she's out talking with people so much. They really need to give her one of those trucks with the grabber arm on the side so she can hit 1000+ stops per day and not even have to get out.

What I thought was funny is the one woman was like a receptionist and she was at risk of losing her "dream house" because "property taxes increased". There were a bunch of worthless people living in the house not working like her sister. If a bump in property taxes puts someone's finances over the edge, then she couldn't afford the house to begin with.

The CEO saw her financial trouble and decided that since they can't manage their finances the only reasonable thing to do was give her a promotion and let her hire two people under her. He actually cited this as a reason in a meeting. What about her co-workers that bought homes they could afford and have saved for a rainy day? Apparantly the best way to get a promotion at Waste Management is to buy a Mcmansion dream house you can't afford and whine about how you can't pay your bills.

Probably the most unfair thing I've ever seen a manager do.

angelaira said: I was also astounded that the best way they could find to collect trash on a hill in the wind was with a pointy stick... when you hire someone to do a job you should train them to do the job, not just put them on a hill in the wind with a pointy stick

At one point in my life my job was to pick up trash with a pointy stick.

The foreman was correct in saying that it ain't rocket science. And that the COO sucked at it, at least in the footage I saw.

There is a "trick" if you will to picking up as much trash as possible on a hill in the wind with a pointy stick, but it takes all of maybe 10-15 minutes to figure it out. I'm guessing the guy was still sore from a previous assignment.

angelaira said:

I was also astounded that the best way they could find to collect trash on a hill in the wind was with a pointy stick... wouldn't a fence barrier designed to collect windblown trash be a cheaper and better idea than paying someone minimum wage to do that??? A net maybe???
And the guy that fired him was just a jerk, I don't care what your medical issues are, when you hire someone to do a job you should train them to do the job, not just put them on a hill in the wind with a pointy stick and say "I can do the job this way and I have a medical condition, you have to do as good as me". Really? Well if you do the job so well, why don't you demonstrate and teach me what you know, and if it comes with years of practice, then give me time to learn! Imagine getting that guy as a boss your first day at WM, and getting fired for "failing to perform" and now being blacklisted from WM for having been "previously fired" simply because that guy was your boss. Not exactly a fair way to handle employees.

I was thinking the same thing about utilizing a fence or net instead of having a team of people out there manually stabbing at it. It sounds like they do it quite often so a fence/net should pay for itself pretty quickly.

psuJC said: The CEO didn't change that because he felt bad for the workers, he changed it because it's illegal...
And as you see in the show, whatever rounding or docking system employers come up with, employees will find a way around. With computerized time clock systems, there's really no reason to round punches anymore. Pay your employees from the minute they punch in to the minute they punch out.

Yeah. I worked in a plant once where there was a single punch clock and if you punched in a minute late you were docked 5 minutes. (same if you punched out a minute early)

Come to think of it, at one time or another I've done most all of the jobs on last night's show. Yeah, including the toilets and garbage truck. Nothing quite like having either one when the weather is hot/humid, the container's full and the "liquor" sloshes out on you.

Ok, so you put nets or fences in place to capture most of the trash, then send employees out with pointy sticks to clean out the fences and collect anything that blew past, but you do it on a day that isn't windy if at all possible, and you don't make it someone's daily job and only responsibility... if it were me, I would have several successive lines of barrier fencing (plastic netting and metal poles) to capture the majority of it, and then I would assign a team of workers to go out and spend two hours every Friday to clean out the net fencing and pick up anything that blew past... I might even change up which group did it each Friday so no one gets bored. It could be considered "team building" and a change of pace or something, instead of paying one guy $8 an hour plus benefits to be out there all day every day.

That guy earns on average $64 ($8 an hour 8 hours a day) a day to do that, plus benefits, plus insurance, etc.
In five days I save $320 in just the wages I would pay him (not counting benefits, insurance, disability if he stabs himself with that stupid stick, etc.)
on Friday I have 10 people go out and I spend $160 on a ten man team to do the job in 2 hours (I figure ten people working together to get the job done will be faster, especially if they get to leave as soon as all the trash is gone and still get paid their two hours).
Lets say I spend the remaining $160 a week on fences, including their installation, for the next ten weeks, I then have my fences in place, and I have a team to go do the cleanup weekly. If more is needed we adjust accordingly, but overall it seems inefficient and costly to have one guy on a hill stabbing trash with a pointy stick!

Lets say I get a DUI work program to send a few volunteers once a month for anything that has blown off property, bonus... and that poor woman that gets dizzy watching that crazy machine and pulling cardboard off a conveyor belt gets to get some fresh air once a month when her teams turn comes up...

kristaqqqq said: that trash lady had germs all over her gloves (from both the trash and from her pee can)! I thought it was a nice idea for the sake of TV, but it seems kind of weird.

I know somebody who used to drive a garbage truck. On a bad day he might work 12-14 hours without eating, because he refused to eat on the job. He needed to get home and bathe before he could eat. And he would not go around touching other people, I'm sure.

tripleB said: Modern Organizational Behavior Theory suggests high level managers should frequently spend time doing work alongside frontline employees.

Thank goodness for business school so tripleB can also learn what everyone else learned in kindergarten.

This seems like Big Corporate America's attempt to rehab it's image/reputation with "main street", by humanizing the business from top to bottom.

I wonder how the show was pitched - as a means for the little guy to have a voice to the top, or for the top dog to be able to show that his company isnt an evil heartless beast.

Based on the tone of the first episode, this may in fact be the best opportunity for big banks to climb out of the public's doghouse.....

Not believable, by the time someone becomes CEO they no longer have any humanity left in them.

SigX said: If Hooters was pubicly traded, I would be shorting that stock today.
Hmm...

Also, the NYSE is closed so good luck shorting anything today.