Peter Thomas Ricci 2025-01-23 05:23:56
HOW CAN COMPANIES OVERCOME LABOR CHALLENGES AND BUILD A HAPPY WORKFORCE? PER SCOTT GREENBERG, IT’LL REQUIRE INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO CULTURE, TRAINING AND RETENTION.
SCOTT GREENBERG
TITLE: President, Andergreen Inc.
EXPERIENCE:
30 years as a business speaker, coach and writer; 10 years as multiunit franchise owner
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
• Authoring two books published by Entrepreneur Magazine
• Building the No. 1 ranked Edible Arrangements location in Calif. (out of 110 stores) and winning Best Customer Service out of 1,000 locations worldwide
• Speaking at a TEDx event
Worker dissatisfaction, explains Scott Greenberg, is not a new concept.
“Most people in most jobs have been unhappy, at least for decades, perhaps for centuries,” says Greenberg, an entrepreneur and president of the Andergreen consultancy. “But older generations accepted that work is something to be endured. It used to just be: get the bills paid, get a career, try to have some stability.”
In recent decades, however, those attitudes have shifted in a profound way. “Endurance,” Greenberg explains, is not the admirable quality it once was. Employees are now looking for an entirely different quality in their work life: happiness.
“When so many hourly workers lost their jobs during the pandemic, they had time to reflect, time to realize how difficult their work is,” Greenberg says. “They had time to search their souls and search the internet for new opportunities. We’ve gotten to a point, now, where people are no longer willing to suffer through work. Workplaces that are horrible places to be become less appealing.”
Numerous surveys and studies reinforce Greenberg’s point: Gallup’s measurement of employee engagement found 50% of U.S. workers are “not engaged” with their jobs and 16% are “actively disengaged.” Alarmingly, a Legion survey of hourly workers discovered 62% planned to leave their jobs in the next year, with 64% leaving the industry entirely.
“People want to leave, but they don’t just want to leave — they want to go somewhere better,” Greenberg says. “Now the concept of, ‘You’re loyal just because you’ve been given a job,’ that’s no longer a belief. Everybody has to earn loyalty, and if an employer doesn’t, then employees are going to go seek out another environment.”
For insights on how processors can earn their workers’ loyalty, we spoke with Greenberg.
Alt-Meat: Why are so many workers looking to leave not only their specific job, but entire industries?
GREENBERG: So often, it is about a specific workplace; it might be the culture of management, how people are treated. But in other cases, it is the entire industry, because the work itself is difficult, uncomfortable, unpleasant. And when people have options that are more pleasant, that are more comfortable, and are less painful for the same compensation, it would be crazy for them not to move over to those places.
So what that means is, if you can’t make your work environment more physically comfortable or pleasant, then you need to compensate in other ways. The easiest way is to pay more money — that will get people, but it won’t keep people
What is going to keep people is if you fulfill other emotional needs by having a great culture, by having better management, by making people feel valued. Where basically, you’re making the discomfort worthwhile, and it’s going to take a lot more than financial compensation to do it.
Alt-Meat: You’re not a fan of abstraction in employee communication. Why not?
GREENBERG: Concepts such as ‘mission statements,’ ‘purpose statements’ or ‘value statements’ tend to be written by white-collar, educated leaders at the top of the pyramid. They have the luxury of being able to write that way, communicate that way and have all that pageantry. And at the level at which they’re working, perhaps big things really are happening; but, so often there’s a disconnect between what’s happening there and what’s happening with those on the front line.
For instance, there are quick-service restaurants that have big missions: ‘We seek to improve the world.’ How do you communicate that to someone who is serving frozen yogurt? There’s a disconnect there. I guess you can make an argument that frozen yogurt makes the world a better place, but it’s kind of over the top.
People do need a sense of purpose, and they need certain working principles; however, the language that’s used, how it is communicated, needs to be on the floor, not up on the mountaintop.
Alt-Meat: What is a better way to communicate, then?
GREENBERG: I recommend having a mission statement that’s not customer-facing — not one that you put on your website to impress customers. It should be employee-facing.
And then for each value that you have, create a list of behaviors that reflect the value — specific dos and don’ts that employees can understand. For integrity, it might be, ‘We always tell the truth. We follow through on our commitments. We only speak positively about our teammates.’ Those are simple things to understand, and then it’s easier to hold employees accountable for demonstrating that value, because they understand the behaviors — not abstract concepts.
Alt-Meat: ‘Culture’ is a word that gets thrown around often in HR and business circles. What is a healthy work culture to you, and how do you advise companies to improve their workplace cultures?
GREENBERG: First, let’s talk about what culture isn’t: Culture isn’t being nice to people and giving them stuff. That’s kindness. Culture is the dynamics that exist between a group of two or more people. It is the social norms that dictate how groups interact. Every group of people, two or more, has a culture — the best by design, though most are by default.
The idea is to be deliberate about creating that dynamic, creating the social norms and establishing the expectations, belief system and goals, so everyone has the same thoughts and beliefs. They see things the same way. Then, establish customs and rituals — behaviors that reflect and support those beliefs.
You think about religion. What’s a religion? It’s two or more people who have the same beliefs about what happened, what is true, what’s important. And then, they have customs and rituals that reflect those beliefs. It’s prayers and foods and holidays and their own rites of passage. Same thing with countries and nationalities and any group that you’re a part of.
For a business, it’s about hiring people who can fit into your belief system, and then you enroll them in the list of rituals and customs and behaviors that reflect that.
Alt-Meat: You’ve visited some innovative manufacturing spaces to learn from their example. What were some of the things you’ve seen that impressed you, from an employee experience standpoint?
GREENBERG: One of them is called Catania Oils, which manufactures consumable oils and employs a couple hundred workers. Like everyone else, they needed to find a way to be an employer of choice, because they’re in a rural setting and they need to get as many people as possible — it is manufacturing work. So, they spend a lot on culture. They spend a lot on a creative, fun work environment, and then they advertise that.
They’re active in the communities. Everyone knows who they are; not just what they sell, but who they are as an employer. They capture on camera [their workers’ happiness] and they post it on social media. They’ve created this fun, pleasant work environment and then that’s what they really push on social media — not just what people get, but how their employees feel. And that’s attractive.
They have one program called Walk in My Shoes, where an employee can identify another department or another job that interests them, and they can go spend a day shadowing someone in that department just to learn about it. And maybe one day they might want to move there or maybe just have more context for the whole company.
They do another program called Supermarket Safari, where they take employees on field trips to local stores that have their oils on their shelves. Employees can see that they’re not just creating widgets — they’re creating a real thing that touches consumers. They can feel proud of their work.
Another company, it’s called Industrial Packaging. They have about a hundred workers, and they package all kinds of different third-party foods and products. But the production needs vary quite a bit day by day, and they can’t offer regular full-time work. So a huge percentage of their workforce are temps, but some of these temps have been with them for decades. And even when there’s an economy where no one can find employees, this temp agency has people calling them all the time asking if there’s any daily work at Industrial Packaging.
They’re so big on culture, no one gets to the factory floor unless they’ve gone through culture training, unless they’re aware of what that is. They’re all part of the culture, and they identify what their soft needs are, and they do their best to accommodate them.
Additionally, there’s a tablet on the facility floor, and every week, they take the temperature of employee satisfaction and calculate their employee Net Promoter Score. In manufacturing, the average employee score is +13. For Industrial Packaging, it’s +72.
Obviously, people wonder how they get there. But just the fact that they take the measurement in the first place, and then respond to it and ask questions because it matters to them — that is a tactic. People appreciate that they’re asked the question, that the company is interested in how they feel. They’re not just counting how many widgets per hour. Employee satisfaction itself matters to them, and they measure it weekly.
You’re hired!
LOCATIONS OF OPEN ALT-PROTEIN POSITIONS AS OF JANUARY 2025
The alt-protein industry may be younger than the conventional ag industry, but that doesn’t mean the hiring pool is shallow.
Universities like Tufts and UC Davis are consistently turning out skilled, well-educated graduates excited to break into the world of work, while longtime food- and beverage-industry workers move into the space and career changers look to make their mark in a new sector.
But the field is still relatively small — and it’s currently contracting. The experts at Alt Protein Partners, a recruiting firm for the industry, report that open alt-protein jobs in the U.S. decreased by about 26% from mid-2024 to January 2025.
Despite the shrinkage, the U.S. was the country with the most open alt-protein jobs in January 2025, and California was the U.S. state with the most unfilled alt-protein jobs.
Puris, the U.S.-based plant-based pea protein maker, was looking to hire the most employees (26!) among alt-meat makers and ingredients providers. Around the globe, Upside, Plantible, Konscious, Maple Leaf, SunOpta, Enough, Believer, Redefine Meat, Meati, Gourmey and Planted led the hiring pack.
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HUMAN RESOURCES
https://library.alt-meat.net/articles/human-resources