the front line
Far from being expendable, front-line employees
Protecting
represent your best shot at improving the bottom line. By Andrea davis
often viewed as the quickest and most effective way to improve
the bottom line and ensure an organization’s survival. And, more
often than not, it’s the employees at the bottom of the corporate
ladder – seen as unskilled, low-wage earners – who bear the
brunt of such cuts.
But in her new book, “Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder”
(Harvard Business Press), researcher and academic Jody Heymann shatters the myth that only high-skilled and highly educated employees are worth investing in. Heymann is the founding
director of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy at
McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and the founding director
of the Project on Global Working Families at Harvard University.
Over the course of many years spent traveling the globe and in-
terviewing employees at all levels of the corporate ladder, she’s
reached the conclusion that investing in front-line employees has
a powerful and positive impact on corporate profitability.
Heymann sat down with EBN to offer insight into how orga-
nizations of all sizes can profit from offering their least-skilled
employees better benefits, more flexibility and ways to have their
voices heard.
SlaShing benefitS and wageS, particularly in tough economic timeS, iS
(see employees on pAge 28)
