How HR can better support hourly workers

Most folks have worked an hourly job at some point in their careers.

Nearly 56% of wage and salary workers over 16 years old are paid hourly rates, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In his recently published book, Stop the Shift Show: Turn Your Struggling Hourly Workers Into a Top-Performing Team, author, speaker, and franchise expert Scott Greenberg urges companies to prioritize these employees to recruit and retain them.

He spoke with HR Brew about what hourly workers want and need from their employers.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you hope HR pros take away from your book?

First of all, that there is a major meaningful difference between hourly workers and those on salary, and because of those differences, they must be managed differently. And therefore, management at every level needs to be a lot more aware of those differences and be willing to continuously adapt to meet the needs of their hourly workforce.

What are some of those differences that HR should be aware of?

For hourly workers, in quiet times, their hours may be reduced, but even during busy times, their hours might be changed. Well, these are people who also might be going to other jobs, who might be going to school…so they’re constantly having to juggle, because their hours are in flux. And, because their income is also in flux, that adds to the chaos…Their relationships with management tend to be more transactional than relational. There are not as many opportunities for them to grow and advance the organization, and so when they feel less loyalty from the organization, they feel less loyal to the organization. And so that makes it a lot easier for them to move from one employer to another.

Often, they feel a lot less connected to culture. Now, when it comes to culture, people who earn [a] salary…they might respond a little bit more to a lot of the abstraction around culture…Well, for hourly workers, a lot of times those kinds of things that describe culture are just way too abstract. Your organization’s mission might be, “We exist to change the world.” But if you’re someone on the factory floor, or you’re someone who is just scooping ice cream, when someone tells you, “We exist to change the world,” they’re rolling their eyes, they think that’s absurd…They need that culture to be more tangible and more meaningful.

How can HR resolve some of these issues?

Hourly workers, they tend to skew younger, and so generational differences are a lot more meaningful. So, as Generation Z increasingly enters the workforce, the characteristics about them, the value system around them, it’s also going to change the workplace as well, and so management needs to stay on top of those things…They really have to get to know their individual workers, since they probably don’t have the money to pay them more, they have to find other ways to compensate them [and] to understand, what are their emotional needs?

Do you have advice for HR pros who struggle with getting executive support on initiatives?

[Encourage] upper management, help them understand that there’s a change taking place in human resources, and here’s what top organizations are doing. So, if we want to be competitive when it comes to our workforce, we need to stay on top of these innovations and new ways of doing things. Otherwise, they’re going to take our employees [and] they’re going to be the ones who dominate as employers.