A Field Guide to Managing Hourly Workers

The Find: Hourly workers make up 60 percent of the U.S. labor force, yet little effort is spent on improving their productivity -- despite research that suggests that you can do so.
The Source: A study by the Workforce Institute.

The Takeaway: Besides accounting for more than half of the U.S. workforce, hourly jobs also make up eight of the ten fastest growing jobs in the U.S. So why is so little attention paid to how to get the most out of these workers? The Workplace Institute suggests that it's because hourly workers are such a big, diverse group. One solution doesn't work for all. To solve the problem, the Workforce Institute suggests managers mentally break down hourly workers into four types:

Simple Transactional. Example jobs: Stock or data entry clerks, construction laborers.
Simple Experiential: Retail Sales Person, Telemarketers, Receptionists
Complex Transactional: Industrial Truck Operators, Machinists, Bakers
Complex Experiential: Registered Nurse, Administrative Assistant, Police Officer

By looking closely at who exactly your workers are, you can get a sense of what might be holding them back. Is retention a problem? Counter productive behavior like theft? Attendance? Once you know what sort of workers you've got and what their weaknesses are you can come up with creative solutions to address those weakness.

Simple experiential jobs, for example, often require people skills that translate well in a number of settings. A good clerk at the Foot Locker is likely to be a good receptionist as well. This makes it easier for simple transactional workers to shift jobs and makes retention a challenge. Often these are young or college-age workers (the Workforce Institute lays out the demographics for each job type) which further complicates efforts to get your trained workers to stick around. Therefore, a perk to set your company apart from competitors (say a small tuition reimbursement) to help keep your workers on the job longer might end up paying for itself.

The chart below summarizes the effectiveness of various strategies for each type of work. For for the full field guide to hourly workers, check out the complete report.

Expected Impact of Talent Management Methods of Hourly Workforce Productivity

Talent Management Intervention	Transactional Simple	Experiential Simple	Complex Transactional	Experiential Complex
English as a Second Language Training	High	Low	Moderate	Low
Tuition Reimbursement	Moderate	High	Moderate	Moderate
Technical Training	Low	Low	High	High
Customer Service Training	Low	High	Low	Moderate
Integrity Testing	High	Moderate	Low	Low
Healthcare Benefits	High	Moderate	High	High

(Image of punch clock by Philo, CC 2.0)

Jessica Stillman

Jessica lives in London where she works as a freelance writer with interests in green business and tech, management, and marketing.

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