Work-for-a-Day Puts Managers in Touch
One recent rainy day, Albert Kelly slipped on a doorman’s uniform and hailed taxis at the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan. Later, he donned a white jacket and chef’s hat and served lunch to housekeepers and bellhops in the company cafeteria.
This was no ordinary workday. Kelly, Hyatt’s executive vice president, is usually in Chicago, wearing a suit and tie and sitting at a marble-topped desk, making sure that other employees are hailing taxis and serving lunch.
One day a year, Hyatt Hotels Corp. shuts its corporate office and its top 450 managers--400 of whom never worked in a hotel--do the jobs of their employees to see what a regular shift is like.
By stepping down from the corporate ladder, Kelly says, he gains a better understanding of the duties of an hourly worker. The 50-year-old executive has discovered that the jobs aren’t as easy as they seem: During his stint at the front door, an impatient cabbie sped away before he could finish loading the passenger’s bags. While maneuvering in the kitchen, he learned that the crew needed another fryer to handle the busy crowd.
“Since there are no cash registers in the corporate office, it’s important everyone understands why we’re here,” Kelly said. “If we don’t make the employees happy we have less success with customers. It’s all interrelated.”
Hyatt’s 3-year-old program, called “In Touch Day,” is senior management’s way of getting closer to those who work where the money is made. Hyatt isn’t alone; more and more companies are trying to bridge the gap between the rank-and-file and the executive suites.
Although most management consultants applaud any executive effort to communicate with the work force, they say that such a program can be little more than a symbolic gesture, an elaborate public-relations ploy to show executive-level concern.
“Some are nothing more than fancy window dressing, designed to communicate ‘we really care’ when maybe they really don’t,” said Mardy Grothe, a Boston psychologist and management consultant.
Many service businesses, Grothe said, have realized that attention to customers is increasingly important in today’s competitive economy. Some are formal programs requiring months of planning; others are done on a whim when executives decide to pitch in to rally the troops.
To celebrate its annual founder’s day, McDonald’s Corp. asks several thousand workers from its corporate and regional offices worldwide --as well as its advertising agencies and beef vendors--to serve french fries and wipe tables. Avis requires that all employees at the vice president level or above spend at least one day a year behind car rental counters or under hoods. At America West Airlines, the top two officers load baggage in the busy holiday seasons.
Some senior managers see working the front line as the best way to get accurate information.
“Top-level executives are in great danger of having information too filtered to be true representations of reality,” said Audrey Freedman, a management counselor and economist at the Conference Board, a New York-based business research group.
“When they recognize it, one of the impulses, because we’re practical Americans, is to get out there and see for yourself how customers respond and how employees feel about the job.”
This hands-on approach is modeled after the Japanese concept of “walk-around management,” in which the bosses walk the factory floor to see what’s going on.
At Southwest Airlines, based in Dallas, the top 60 managers fill various jobs at airports four times a year. Chairman Herbert Kelleher has worked as a flight attendant passing out peanuts. “We get direct input, which is invaluable,” said Ann Rhoades, the company’s vice president of people.
Executives and observers say that for such programs to be effective, they must be part of a larger effort to keep employees well-informed and involved.
