The Tribe Report 5. The Non-Desk Worker Issue | Page 11

BY ELIZABETH COGSWELL BASKIN

WHY IS NOBODY TALKING
TO NON-DESK WORKERS?
So many companies have very little communication
between top management and their non-desk
employees. Why? Because it’s hard to do.
Communicating with all those people sitting in front
of computers all day is much easier. They have easy
access to the intranet; they can download employee
e-magazines or open the electronic newsletter; they
can read a blog post from the CEO. As a last resort, you
can always shoot them a mass email.
But all those sales associates, warehouse workers, hotel
housekeepers, quick-service cashiers, and guys driving
trucks out in the field are moving targets.
At the same time, these non-desk workers are often
the face of the brand. They are the people who create
the customer experience. Companies routinely invest
millions in promoting their brand to customers. Yet
one surly drive-through attendant can wreck that
customer experience.

NATIONAL STUDY OF
EMPLOYEES WITHOUT
COMPUTERS
This summer, Tribe conducted a national study of
non-desk workers in companies with workforces of
1,000 or more. The subjects came from many fields,
including retail, hospitality and food service, as well as
fulfillment centers, airlines and oil rigs. Online surveys
provided quantitative data while phone interviews
offered more in-depth responses.
As do many of Tribe’s clients, the great majority
of companies represented in the study delegate
most communication with non-desk workers to
their immediate supervisors. The top management
communicates with middle management, and they in
turn pass that information on to their own team.

LOST IN TRANSLATION
This is an efficient system, but not always
effective. Non-desk employees in our study
complained that some managers are better than
others at communicating. Also, that there are issues
with timing (some employees hearing the news before
others), consistency (employees of one manager might
hear different information from those working for a
different boss) and thoroughness of communication
(some managers just give the highlights, while others
will tell the whole story). A few respondents mentioned
the old parlor game of telephone, where a message
passed from one person to another soon loses any
semblance of the original.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
(JUST A LITTLE BIT)
The most striking insight of the study was that when
non-desk workers do not get any (or very little)
commun