Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce

(Hardback)

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Most managers assume that surviving, especially in recessions, requires slashing wages, benefits, and other workforce expenses. And lowest-skilled workers are often viewed as the most expendable.
In Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder, Jody Heymann overturns these assumptions. Drawing from thousands of interviews with employees from front line to C-suite at companies around the world, Heymann shows how enterprises have profited more by improving working conditions.
She also demonstrates that lower-skilled employees - in call centers, repair services, product assembly - aren't expendable. They can determine 90 percent of companies' profitability. High performers positively shape customers' perceptions of businesses, driving satisfaction and loyalty.
To attract, train, and retain top-caliber people in these roles, you must enhance working conditions, creating a system in which your company and its employees profit together. Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder shows what works - from stock options for bakers to flexibility for factory workers to career tracks in call centers.
Featuring cases from companies around the globe - including a leading concrete manufacturer in India, a top European pharmaceutical firm operating in China, and successful U.S. manufacturers - this book shows how real organizations are excelling financially by strengthening frontline employees' working conditions.

Reviews

"Heymann (founder & director, Project on Global Working Families) synthesizes and analyzes 500 interviews undertaken by her research team on field visits to corporations worldwide that have increased profit and productivity by obtaining or providing "health, skills, training, motivation, input, and commitment" from the staff at the lower end of the income scale. Her own case studies are generously interspersed with clearly marked risk/reward analyses, capped off with a succinct chapter on "creating a blueprint" for your own company. With corporate social responsibility a trending topic, leaders looking for a bottom-line justification to do some good for staff at the lower end of the ladder should find inspiring ideas here. Easy to read, timely, and relevant; recommended." - Library Journal, May 15, 2010 "overlooked gem" - BNET

Author Bio

Jody Heymann holds a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy and is founding director of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy. Dr. Heymann is a professor in the Faculties of Medicine and Arts at McGill University, as well as founding director of the Project on Global Working Families, founding chair of the Initiative on Work, Family, and Democracy at Harvard University and on the faculty at Harvard. She has served in an advisory capacity to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other organizations. Dr Heymann received her Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University, where she was selected in a university-wide competition as a merit scholar, and her M.D. with honors from Harvard Medical School.