For Immediate Release: January 8, 2008
Since the first night shift in history was conceived, the vast majority of employees have not been overly excited about the prospect of shift work. Issues with circadian rhythms, time away from family, and overall stress have all been factors in causing low morale and shift worker turnover. Core Practice Partners believes they have a better way and today from their offices in Chicago announced the three pronged approach to treating shift workers with what they believe is long overdue respect.
Core Practice Partners does focus on business considerations and cost savings for a large portion of the consulting work they do, but employees are also critical according to Senior Partner John Frehse. “Our clients are running businesses and can’t afford to take their eye off the ball. However, they need solutions to improve employee morale and they partner with us to make positive things happen.” After assessing the business requirements, Core Practice Partners works with employees to explore how they want to accomplish the typically wide variety of challenges.
“Employee preferences first must be gathered and analyzed against our extensive database of benchmarks to help guide the process,” according to Senior Project Manager Bill Cowell. Bill works with employees directly to gain feedback and combine employee responses with the needs of the business. Second, Core Practice Partners combines these efforts with education on why change is happening. According to Bill, employees do much better in even difficult change scenarios if they are not kept in the dark about the reasons for change. Finally, health and nutrition education is added so that employees can take advantage of the latest information on shift work and health. According to Mr. Frehse, “We know that shift workers or anyone for that matter will not do everything we teach them when it comes to health and nutrition. Awareness is critical, and at a minimum we are helping employees make strides forward.”
Core Practice Partners, based in Chicago, IL, is the leading consultancy globally on labor strategy in shift work environments.
2 comments:
Our business must lower costs. Everytime we present new initiatives the employees vote it down. Does your database deal with these issues? We want to push this stuff but we don't want to increase wages or have the employees bring in a union. Our employees don't trust the management, plus the past leadership team backed down several times before with the treat of unionization so that makes change even more difficult for us.
Employee scheduling is almost always going to be an emotional event. The key is to understand what the employees really want. If you read "It's Not About The Money" which is an article I wrote recently, it covers these issues. Check it out at http://www.corepractice.com. Don't rely on the vocal minority. The database allows management teams to get at the root cause, not the assumed issues. Having the facts allows you to make decisions with the education and confidence to make them stick. Call with questions on my direct line at 212 534 0539 if this didn't answer your question.
Thanks for writing in,
John
Post a Comment