Front-line employees don't envy remote workers, Gallup data shows
In their quest to get more workers back in offices as occupancy stagnated over the past year, executives from Tesla's Elon Musk to Starbucks's Howard Schultz have argued that remote work is unfair to employees who must do their jobs in person.
Their comments highlight a real inequality: While white-collar workers have achieved "the holy grail of work schedule flexibility," front-line employees have seen virtually no improvements since before the pandemic, said Daniel Schneider, a sociology professor at Harvard University.
Flexibility has always been extremely tough to come by for front-line workers, but these employees - who make up 58 percent of America's workforce - aren't wracked with envy for hybrid or remote work, according to a survey published this week by Gallup. (Gallup defines front-line workers as those who are manufacturing products or working directly with customers, including industries such as transportation, health care, restaurants, hotels and retail.)
The majority (57 percent) of almost 35,500 workers surveyed said they were "not at all" bothered that other workers sometimes worked from home. But they still want more flexibility in their own jobs, said Ryan Pendell, senior workplace science editor with Gallup, who worked on the survey.
"Everybody wants the ability to reasonably adjust your job in order to make your job and the rest of your life fit," Pendell said. (There are also workers who are bothered about hybrid work: frustration was highest among workers who work fully on-site but have remote-capable roles, Gallup's data found.)
For workers in industries such as retail, health care, manufacturing and transportation, having a say in when they work is what matters most, Gallup's data shows. When asked what kind of flexibility would entice them to leave their current employer, only 33 percent of front-line workers said their heads would be turned by the ability to work from home. Along with more vacation and paid time off, employees surveyed placed the highest value on being able to choose which days they worked, Gallup's data found. Workers placed less value on having flexible start and end times to their shifts.
For Vicenta Diaz, who works for McDonald's in Los Angeles, the ideal schedule would be a fixed one. Diaz, 65, knows when she'll be working at least two weeks ahead of time thanks to the city's fair workweek ordinance, which went into effect in April. But that doesn't guarantee her consistent hours. The quantity and length of her shifts fluctuate from week to week, and with them, her earnings.
"It's never the same schedule and that makes things difficult," Diaz said. The financial unpredictability is stressful for her.
Diaz rarely gets as many hours as she wants, she said, and getting time off when she's sick or needs to help with her grandchildren is a challenge.
"They give us no flexibility," Diaz said, adding that she longs for more control over how she does her work.
Many front-line workers are expected to keep their availability open, said Schneider, who has spent years researching how scheduling affects workers' lives. Some workers rarely get notice about when they'll be working; others can't count on a stable income because they're often sent home early if business is slow.
About 80 percent of front-line workers had little to no input on their schedules before the pandemic, according to Schneider's research - and he doubts that figure has changed much since.
"That's not fair and not sustainable for workers," Schneider said. "We need to recognize that workers can have constraints to their availability and still be committed to work."
These "just in time" scheduling practices grant employers flexibility in how they manage staff (and save them money) but they also wreak havoc on other areas of workers' lives, such as parenting and caregiving, Schneider's research has found.
Still, few companies are exploring ways to give front-line workers more control over when and how they work, Schneider said.
In recent years, some cities and states have passed legislation to set standards for more predictable schedules. In Oregon, for example, large employers in retail, hospitality and food services are required to publish schedules two weeks in advance, and must pay workers small penalties for changing them without advance notice. Berkeley, Calif., put a similar law on the books in January.
Gallup's survey found that employees who work in person have far lower engagement than remote workers, or than those who work in person but could do their jobs from home.
Pendell said front-line workers often get a "command and control" side of management that is "outdated" and fails to consider research about what motivates employees and makes them feel productive and connected to their workplace.
"Front-line workers have the same needs as hybrid workers," Pendell said. "But they get left out of those conversations."
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