Data Watch

Engaging Hourly Employees

Study identifies six essential workplace dimensions

Investment in quality jobs for hourly workers makes good business sense, finds a study conducted by researchers at the University of Kentucky and Boston College. Six workplace dimensions, their research indicates, are essential components to employee engagement and customer satisfaction in the retail industry. Supervisor effectiveness is the most powerful driver of these, followed by opportunities for career development, climate of teamwork, job fit and adequate resources to get the job done, schedule satisfaction, and schedule flexibility.

On this last dimension, schedule flexibility, the report provides additional information. Overall, three-quarters of employees at "CitiSales," pseudonym for the Fortune 100 retail firm that collaborated with the researchers to develop the study, report some control over their work schedule: 76% report having "some input" to "a lot of input" into their weekly schedule, and 76% report that their schedule preferences are considered "always" or "almost always." More than 90% of senior managers report that offering workplace flexibility to hourly workers makes good business sense. Findings also demonstrate that access to flexibility was predictive of both employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

A total of 3,903 workers in hourly, front-line jobs at hundreds of "CitiSales'" more than 6,000 stores throughout the United States completed the survey, which resulted in a study titled, CitiSales Study—Jobs that Work.