Instead, companies sending their low-wage jobs remote should invest in communication and cross-training so that these roles create more value for companies and their customers, as well as providing a career path for workers.
It’s common to hear business leaders lament that remote work hurts their organisations – by reducing creativity and on-the-job learning, eroding culture or making it tougher to communicate. But those concerns are typically expressed with professional employees in mind.
Low-wage workers, often viewed as easily replaceable, rarely factor into the equation. No one seems to care whether two call centre workers have a water cooler chat that results in an innovative solution to a customer problem.
Zeynep Ton, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of a new book, The Case For Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay And Meaning To Everyone’s Work, thinks it’s a mistake to underestimate the value created by low-wage workers – and a costly one.
Ton has helped executives reduce employee turnover, boost profits and increase customer satisfaction by redesigning their companies so that their low-wage jobs, in her words, let people “feel human, not like a pair of hands, and to have enough pay so that they can have control over their lives”. Pay, benefits, a stable schedule and a clear career path are all essential, with sufficient pay trumping them all.
#Commentary #Remote #work #risks #making #lowwage #jobs #worse
