March Retail Labor Index

The March release of the Kronos Retail Labor Index reveals that in February 2010 both applications and hires decreased over January 2010 levels on a seasonally adjusted basis. The decrease in applications slightly outweighed the decrease in hires, so that the Index rose from 3.20% to 3.26%. This means that for every 100 applications received, 3.26 hires occurred in February.

One developing trend is the increasing volatility of application levels. The past few months have seen significant swings in application volumes, with increases in September and October followed by large decreases in November and December, and then a significant 20% month-to-month increase in January.

Currently, job applicants are forced to make employment decisions in an environment of extreme uncertainty about a job market recovery. In this uncertain environment, positive economic news (such as a better-than-expected holiday sales season) will encourage new entrants to the job market – both those wishing to change jobs, as well as those who are out of work but who had stopped looking for work. In the absence of sustained additional hiring by employers, these application surges will have limited durability. We would not be surprised to see this volatility continue well into 2010.

March 8, 2010 | This post has one comment | Read this post »

I’ll take some flies with that…

I recently attended the Net Promoter Conference in New York City and had the pleasure of hearing Director of Customer Service Tom Graves and CEO Jim Parrish of Carolina Biological Supply talk about how they’ve grown their business by investing in the skills of their frontline workers. Carolina supplies college and high school science departments with the equipment and organisms they require to equip their laboratories.

Their story is a great case study for organizations seeking to grow the loyalty of their customers through improving the experience delivered by the employees who interact with those customers on a daily basis. Carolina achieved success by explicitly measuring their customers’ experience, sharing that customer feedback with employees, and providing training to those employees to enable them to better meet their customers’ expectations. Although many organizations undertake similar customer loyalty programs, the extent to which Carolina has involved their customer service reps in driving improved results is unique.

I recently interviewed Tom Graves in order to share the Carolina story with you. You can listen to a podcast of our discussion here.

In this discussion, you’ll hear Tom refer to “NPS”. This stands for Net Promoter Score, a widely used measure of customer loyalty. You can learn more about NPS here.

March 2, 2010 | This post has no comments yet | Read this post »

Undercover with the Boss

If you haven’t seen the new CBS TV show Undercover Boss, it’s worth checking out. Perhaps not so much for the cheesy endings (at least on the first two episodes) where outcomes are achieved for individual employees that rival Queen for a Day in terms of bathos. What is “new” here, though, is our ability to look over the shoulder of CEO’s from brand name companies while they experience first hand how hard their employees work to deliver a good outcome for their customers, often in spite of organizational obstacles imposed in the interest of greater efficiency.

I put “new” in quotes because the concept of understanding your front line employees as a means of understanding how to improve your business goes back to management research that Joseph Juran was pioneering in the 1950’s. When I was teaching total quality management seminars in the 1980’s, we were preaching the value of understanding the moments of truth where your employees either delight or disappoint your customers. What’s therefore so interesting about this show to me is what a revolutionary concept this field level view of the world has become for many organizations.

In the first episode, pictured above, Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management experiences not only how difficult and dirty some of these waste disposal jobs are, but also how well meaning policies set at a corporate level can wreak havoc at the employee level. He seems genuinely surprised to see that truck drivers have no bathroom breaks built into their routes or that cleaning 15 portable toilets an hour is a superhuman effort. He appears equally surprised at the level of grace and humour that many of his brand ambassadors bring to their very tough jobs. Larry takes action to address these issues when he goes back to his day job that hopefully will make the work environment more friendly for his employees.

How great could your organization be if senior leadership could experience life in the trenches?

P.S. In the second episode, the CEO of Hooters seems perplexed that potential customers find the Hooters brand demeaning to women. REALLY?

February 17, 2010 | This post has one comment | Read this post »