Every organization has entry-level hourly employees that in many cases do the work for the lowest pay.
“You don’t see a lot of people talking about that level, and everybody has them, whether they make $10 an hour or $18 an hour or $15 an hour,” says David Walton, founder and owner of Premier Office Movers.
These employees often interact most with the customers but don’t feel a part of the company culture.
At Premier Office Movers, hourly workers make up the bulk of the workforce — of the 48 employees, 39 are hourly. Walton has lots of experience with them, although he’s always trying to improve upon that.
With an annual turnover rate of less than 20 percent, he says the managers of the hourly service organization try to be fair and recognize accomplishments.
Hourly employees work hard on evenings and weekends, carrying items up and down stairs for corporate clients, so Walton says a lot of what the business does is geared toward those folks.
“That’s the difference. It’s not so much me. It’s not the trucks. It’s not the equipment. It’s really how those folks perform,” he says.
When Walton talks to customers, they want to know why they should care about a good leader or good supervisor. In other words, why pay a higher rate?
“What we provide is purely service to customers,” he says. “We are providing people, and to do the job well and to do the job independent of customers, they’ve got to be knowledgeable, they’ve got to be educated.”
It’s the classic cliché — you get what you pay for. You don’t want to babysit the movers. You don’t want to have to worry about the sensitive information in your office or damaged items.
People have a bias that hourly workers aren’t hard workers, that they aren’t clean, aren’t always polite or that they are interchangeable, he says.
Educate, explain
Building a culture that supports hourly workers is one of Walton’s major responsibilities — and it’s an ongoing process.
New hires, which are thoroughly checked out, learn about company philosophies and the reasons why things are done a certain way. The movers, installers, drivers and supervisors are included in social activities.
