In a position like that you almost have to take a “durrr, I dunno!” attitude to everything, because if you try to talk to salaried people about what you need to do your job, you are looked at like a dog who just started reciting poetry.
Every now and then a salaried person will try to engage, take you seriously, but once it bounces up the chain of command that an hourly person is acting like they have something to contribute, it will be quietly shut down.
Seems like the business model requires hourly people stay out of the “brain space” entirely. Otherwise you’d have to pay them a living wage.
Really despicable way to treat people IMO. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want people to be proactive about solving problems.
The again, I’ve seen similar attitudes from engineering managers towards their direct reports.
Additionally, front-line workers can see real problems with how customers experience the product that may not be reflected in the metrics used to evaluate the product, since metrics are inevitably gamed.
The ratio of good to bad ideas doesn't matter if you miss the one good idea you really needed. A company that invests in ways to effectively use the ideas of 'untrained people', as you so delicately put it, can derive a lot of value from those ideas.
IMO, this is one of the reasons why distributed command (as opposed to centralized command) models often work better, particularly in a fast moving environment.
In every industry, there are employees whose influence on the company success is outsized, and who are hard to hire or train. In software industry, they are experienced engineers and product managers. In a fashionable restaurant, they are experienced cooks. In an airforce, they are experienced pilots and repairmen. Etc.
When these people are happy with their work, they achieve great results. When they are unhappy, they look for ways to conveniently jump ship, because they have a number of opportunities elsewhere waiting for them to become available. They are in short supply. Every boss has an incentive to keep these people content and loyal.
OTOH every industry has positions for which supply is plentiful, compared to demand. Aspiring game developers without experience, dish washers, burger flippers, etc, can be readily hired, paid little, and easily fired, too. There is no incentive for their bosses to walk an extra mile to keep them happ, especially when pressing them a bit more yields an extra bit of performance, so they mostly aren't happy about their jobs.
The people who are closest to and most affected by problems are the best suited to solve them. If you hire a fleet of people who don't care about solving those problems, they won't get solved. You hire a fleet of people who give a shit day in and day out, you're going to get those nagging issues that, in the long run, cost you the most.
Those companies that think that boots on the ground are replaceable in any industry overestimate the importance of management.
I rely on my people to keep me abreast of the issues, as a manager, that I need to be aware of. I expect them to fix the issues that are within their power to fix and escalate the rest of them.
"People that don't love what they're doing, that don't like what they're doing, they have problems. They're not enjoying it, they're not putting in the extra hours, they're not being creative in trying to find new solutions. So when you love something and you're passionate about it, you put the extra effort into it naturally, you try and get creative with it naturally, and you end up more successful naturally because it's something that you care about."
There are booming industries where the boom mostly floats top executive boats, though. Ask an Uber driver, or an Amazon warehouse worker.
[1]: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
Now you need the job more then the job needs you; eventually you may find yourself in a position where employers compete to have you in the team instead.
As noted in other comments, this DID check for causation and found employee happiness led the benefits, not the other way around.
Article: "However, the authors cite studies of changes within individual firms and organisations which seem to show that improvements in employee morale precede gains in productivity, rather than the other way round."
A theory could be that employers see the improvement in productivity before they are measureble by the methods employed and therefore are happier. E.g. bad processes are replaced which gives happier employees before the gains are evident.
That's the theory - but I don't see the distinction you listed ever proven. People do it because it's the easiest thing, that doesn't make it the best thing. I can just as easily theorycraft that happy employees improve production ACROSS THE BOARD, with lasting and compounding results. The studies that argue this never make the distinction you've listed.
Pressuring a bit on the suckers that got to cling to their jobs still looks like a good short-term policy, especially if the higher-up executing it is also not very happy but is clinging to the job.
That is, the best org is where everyone is level 4 or 5 on the "Tribal leadership" scale [1], but a lot of orgs are at level 2 at the lowest rungs.
[1]: https://emergentbydesign.com/2012/06/28/a-step-by-step-guide...
The reverse where employees feel restricted is bad for both productivity and morale. While procedures have their place (more consistentcy) they also have costs. That sort of strategy may actually work in some cases or be neccessary but it often caps or bottlenecks growth both individually and institutionally. For example medicine is a conservative field partially because of the complexity of the body and the stakes. For every "germ theory" introduction of experimental ideas there are thousands of "just try high doses of amphetamines or radium to strengthen the heart"!
If Burger King significantly increased the salary of their workers or otherwise found ways to improve their morale, would it benefit Burger King in the long run? I tend to suspect so, but it would be hard to prove.
The burger joints known for taking care of their people are also usually seen as being pretty good burger places, and that may be causal, but it also may be that they're just slightly "upscale" of the other burger places and also spend more on the ingredients.
That's not to say that Burger King or McDonald's couldn't do better. I don't really have enough experience with them as a customer or anything else to have a real opinion. But I suspect that, if Burger King were to try to improve their experience in a way that forced them to raise prices by 25% they'd lose a lot of business from people basically just looking for the cheapest burger.
See also the experience of JC Penney and Ron Johnson. A lot of people are pretty much in the position where they have to shop on price.
Keep in mind, though, that if a larger portion of money went to the workers, less of them would be in that position.
It would not benefit Burger King as its clientele’s main goal is purchasing at the lowest price and they will happily go to McDonalds if prices went up. Not all businesses have the luxury of selling to people willing to spend more than rock bottom, and you can see that in most cities, only one or two areas where the upper middle class live will have the business that pay more than the minimum.
Neither am I - they're just making the common choice.
The Losers are low level people who know they have lost the battle to be a big shot.
Clueless are the strivers, the first level or two of management, who think they have a chance to be a big shot.
The Sociopaths actually do have a chance. Not all of them are evil but they all know 100 hour weeks won't do it for them.
Lumbergh in Office Space is classic Clueless. He has surrendered any chance of human contact in his job, but he will never get any higher than he is.
You have to be a certain kind of person to cut staff - some dedicated and valuably skilled - in order to boost the short-term return on your stocks. Likewise, you have to be a certain kind of person to think of customers as a resource that can be farmed and exploited with dark patterns and other manipulations. And in more extreme cases - you have to be a certain kind of person to make non-payment of contractors a deliberate policy.
People who score high on empathy won't be comfortable with those kinds of actions.