Ellen Frank-Miller, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of WORC (Workforce & Organizational Research Center), an applied research and evaluation consultancy creating an inclusive economy for worthwhile jobs. She has spent her 30-year career collaborating with employers, investors, national advocates, and community-based organizations to enhance jobs and make them more accessible.
As an organizational scholar, Ellen spent 15 years in human resource consulting, creating evidence-based programs and policies. Before launching WORC, she founded and led the Workforce Financial Stability Initiative at Washington University’s Social Policy Institute.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [0:00] Ellen Frank-Miller, PhD, on flexible work policies
- [7:27] How companies should approach their work policies
- [16:07] Remote work’s role in boosting productivity and profit
- [24:47] The correlation between commercial real estate investments and return-to-work policies
- [32:03] Reducing operational errors to improve lower-level job quality
- [34:57] How adjusting work schedules increases sales
- [40:31] What are the benefits of job quality improvements?
- [43:32] Ellen talks about corporate citizenship behavior
- [48:27] Tips for gathering input from workers
In this episode…
When it comes to structuring work policies, businesses often make decisions from a profit perspective without consulting their employees. For instance, companies that invest heavily in commercial real estate may oblige workers to return to the office. This leads to high turnover rates and decreased sales and customer satisfaction, inadvertently impacting profit. How can you improve job quality to boost your bottom line?
According to job market researcher Ellen Frank-Miller, businesses regard their workforce as an expense rather than an asset that can increase profit and deliver value. Rather than minimizing labor costs and investing in assets for tax and accounting benefits, Ellen advises enhancing the quality of lower-level jobs to strengthen productivity and raise business production. This entails reducing operational errors and adjusting work schedules to boost employee morale and performance. By focusing on your frontline workers’ satisfaction, you can mitigate the churn rate.
Tune in to this episode of What The Teck? as Rolando Rosas and Dave Kelly interview Ellen Frank-Miller, PhD, about how job quality impacts profit. Ellen explains corporate citizenship behavior, how to structure your work policy, and how to gather employee input.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Rolando Rosas on LinkedIn
- Dave Kelly on LinkedIn
- Global Teck Worldwide
- Circuit Loops
- Ellen Frank-Miller, PhD, on LinkedIn
- WORC
- “The Future of Work With Steve Cadigan” on What The Teck?
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Global Teck Worldwide.
We are a full-service online retailer of professional headsets, webcams, and speaker phones from top manufacturers.
Since 2002, Global Teck Worldwide has provided affordable, high-quality communications equipment and customized telecommunications services to organizations of all sizes.
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Episode Transcript:
Rolando Rosas 0:00
Increased productivity. What was that about?
Ellen Frank-Miller 0:01
Their goal was to reduce turnover in their call centers. What they found is that they reduced wait times by improving the quality of those call center jobs. When you have customers who are happier, it’s a much easier interaction for the call center worker. So improving that customer satisfaction improves your bottom line. Improving jobs improves productivity, when we make lower level jobs better, we reduce operational errors given given example from research that was done with UPS they were having turnover problems and they set out to reduce the costs associated with turnover. So recruiting and training but to their surprise, they also discovered that they had a 75% reduction in delivery snafus.
Rolando Rosas 0:42
The professor is going to give us some lessons some take some notes this class is in session right Little John Welcome to What The Teck? your gateway to business strategies and tech secrets shaping today’s workplace. Hey, Dave, do you buy Nike shoes? Are you a consumer of Nike apparel or Nike shoes?
Dave Kelly 1:12
Yeah, you know what I am I my son actually just bought me a pair of vintage 1989 release Nike Air Jordans. So yeah, it’s not my I’m not a brand loyal test, you know, by any means. But I do. I like Nike. I like some of their products, for sure. But I like some of their competitors stuff.
Rolando Rosas 1:29
Yeah. Well, you know, Nike is one of those companies that is really strong on the return to office and really saying, You guys better get in so much so that in Oregon, their closest competitor, which is Adidas, by the way, only seven miles away, they went and announced a better return to work policy, only three days a week versus Nikes, four day a week. And interesting enough, this article says that in Oregon, which is the highest the highest concentration of hybrid and remote work, Nike is behind the eight ball where most companies will do two or three days, Nike is doing four days returned to Office, which is kind of crazy. You think like you know, they’ve been at the leading edge and progressive and all this stuff. They’re way behind? What do you think of the chances are that Adidas may steal some of their top talent only being seven miles away? Yeah,
Dave Kelly 2:18
I mean, shoot seven miles away, whether you’re, you know, I look at it from the employees perspective, if you work for Nike, and you’re at number one, hey, if you can work for number two, now you have a goal, right? You’re going after number one, if you’re already at number one, then you’re working hard to stay there. So it’s not about you know, jumping into a business that isn’t as successful. They certainly know, Adidas certainly has an opportunity to gain market share over Nike. And I would say with the people that I speak to Rolando, if they’re not offered a competitive hybrid, or work from home option, then they’re just not interested. They want to find organizations that are adopting the technology and adopting this future of work. So I would say it’s very likely that Adidas will have an opportunity to score some top talent, especially their proximity from each
Rolando Rosas 3:07
other. Yeah, you know, there’s, there’s a little bit of research and I love it that today we have Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller, a real researcher, we play one, what’s that commercial? Like I was the like, slept at a Holiday Inn. And so I’m a you know, I’m not one but I’m one on TV or something like that I
Dave Kelly 3:25
was a doctor, I’m not a doctor, but I play with on TV. I’m not an
Rolando Rosas 3:29
certified researcher with a PhD at the end of my name, or the front end somewhere somewhere in my name, but we have one in real life with us today that can nerd in and dive into some of the research that’s out there on some of these topics. But you know, there was something that came out of this article, which was fascinating that employers that grew their headcount, that ones that had a three day return to office policy versus a four day those grew more than the four day so it was a 4.4 headcount versus 3.8. So it seems like on the surface, we just on based on this one bit of research that employers with a more flexible work policy benefited by growing their headcount more now, I’ll defer to the real true life researcher who can give us some more color around that. So
Dave Kelly 4:18
throwing your head counts on the one part of the game for sure, absolutely.
Rolando Rosas 4:21
So why don’t we let’s jump right in and introduce Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller. Let’s not wait around any longer. Dave. So let me tell you a little bit. Let me give you a proper introduction about Dr. Miller. So she’s had a distinguished 30 year career dedicated to improving frontline jobs and fostering in the inclusive economy in 2021. She founded WORC also called work to realize her vision of jobs worth having with expertise in organizational scholarship and human resource consulting, she crafts evidence informed programs and policies. I love that you know, there There’s no other industry that consumes research like that more than the private equity space. And she’s got a few things to say about that before work or WORC. She led the workforce financial stability initiative at the Social Policy Institute and taught research methods at prestigious Washington University and the University of Chicago. I wish I could have gotten into that school at WORC. She advises businesses to enhance conditions for frontline workers and advocates for the pivotal link between better jobs and better business outcomes. Her knack for forging collaborative partnerships is instrumental in advancing the job quality movement. Without further ado, let’s bring on Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller. Welcome to the show. Wow.
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