How to Keep Hourly Workers

Before hiring understand the worker mentality:

I'm an Hourly Worker. Want me to be productive and stick around?

I’m just like you: I want to make it to tomorrow and have that day be a little better than today. I want to survive, maybe even thrive. HELP me do that.

1. Don’t lie to me. Not in the interview, not the first day on the job, never. I am street smart and can tell a lie or liar a mile away. I may not tell you that I know you are telling me something that isn’t true or is skewed to fool me, I’ll just give you less than my best, and leave when I can. I don’t need a job where I get lied to and where people think that it makes them smart.
2. Take the time to train me. You said you would. It is one of the reason I decided to work for you. SHOW me how to be good, not just go through the motions. Train me to be safe. I’ll get it. Then once I have shown I can do that job and be productive, train me to do more.
3. Assign me to someone who is a real person, a person who cares. Industrial companies have way too many supervisors who shouldn’t be supervisors. These are the folks who tell Management and HR they are really trying to teach and train, when all they really want to do is to show management that management is hiring the wrong people. Makes the supervisor feel important and irreplaceable.
4. Tell me WHY. If I know how my job fits into the big picture of our customers, our company and the people I work with, I’ll do a better job. Putting parts together is one thing, putting them together perfectly each time so the airplane doesn’t fall out of the sky is meaningful. Telling me WHY lets me take ownership.
5. Cut me a LITTLE slack. My home life isn’t the same as yours, yet. I might be a single parent, have an older car and don’t yet make enough money to have on hand to repair that gas-guzzler like you can.
6. If I show you respect, I expect the same from you, management and all team members. If I lie, get lazy or make mistakes, fire me. But if I don’t mess up, show me a little respect, a little appreciation for doing a job you don’t want to do. It will go a long way with me. It will motivate me and you will get better choices from me.
7. Do I represent ALL workers? No, but that supervisor who called me “A TEMP” the first day on the job shouldn’t represent all of management either. There are bad industrial workers and bad (really bad) supervisors. The difference is the bad industrial workers just leave, get fired or don’t show up. Your bad supervisors have a bad habit of coming back every day and causing you turnover of good industrial workers.

Respectfully, the people who make the products you sell…