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Improving Work-Life Fit in Hourly Jobs
The Center for WorkLife Law
Globalization presents significant on-going
challenges for U.S. companies. Faced with
competition from developing countries with lower
labor costs, American companies are working
hard to maintain their competitive position. One
common approach is cost cutting by controlling
labor costs. A central message of this report is that
widely accepted ways of cutting labor costs have
unintended consequences that can hurt, rather than
help, an organization's competitive position.
Many employers see that something is amiss, and
complain of outlandishly high rates of turnover
and absenteeism among hourly workers. In one
department store, 80% of the sales staff were on
probation due to absenteeism. (Henly, Shaefer &
Waxman 2005) In some industries, turnover rates
among hourly workers as high as 80% to 500%
are not uncommon. (Lambert & Waxman 2009)
Turnover this high is very expensive, given that
replacing a single hourly employee costs 30% or
more of the employee's annual salary. (Disselkamp
2009) These kinds of costs can jeopardize an
employer's attempt to control labor costs--and give
first-line supervisors nothing but headaches.
High attrition and absenteeism stem from
outdated assumptions, the most basic of which is
that any responsible and committed employee is
always available for work. This was a reasonable
assumption in the 1960s economy of breadwinners
married to homemakers. Today it is sorely outdated
for three reasons:
· In the 1960s only 20% of mothers were
employed; today, in 70% of American
families with children, all adults are in
the labor force. (McClanahan 2004;
Kornbluh 2003) Many families are led by
single mothers who would quite literally
risk arrest for child neglect if they left
their children alone in order to report
to work. Many other families tag team
(where mom works one shift, dad works a
different one, and each parent cares for the
kids while the other is at work)--which
means that, if either parent is ordered to
work mandatory overtime at short notice,
the family has to chose between mom's
job and dad's job in a context where the
family needs both to pay the mortgage.
· To focus only on adults caring for young
children is to miss the full dimensions of
the mismatch between the 21st century
workforce and 20th century assumptions.
Many Americans have elder as well as
child care responsibilities. Nearly a third
of hourly workers in one study had elder
care responsibilities; 57% of adults caring
for elders had taken time off work to do
so, according to another study. (Berg &
Kossek n.d. a; Gibson 2003)
· Last but not least, advances in medicine
mean that many people who would
not have survived in past eras now live
much longer--but need on-going care.
Soaring medical costs leave hospitals
sending patients home "quicker and
sicker," relying on family members for
care that used to be given by nurses.
When today's jobs are designed for yesterday's
workforce, the uncontrolled turnover and
absenteeism that result are costs of poor schedule
design.
Employers can control costs by replacing their
traditional reliance on first-line supervisors with a
more scientific scheduling process. "Scheduling...
is having a huge effect on the bottom line," notes
workforce management expert Lisa Disselkamp.
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