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Customers care about the quality of the product, which is arguably influenced by how happy workers are. But of course this link is very indirect and very differ

Customers care about the quality of the product, which is arguably influenced by how happy workers are. But of course this link is very indirect and very different for different types of workers.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
I'd say this link is very indirect; in fact, a lot of structure in companies exist solely to decouple the two. On the one hand this is sound - you want the end result to be independent of moods and dramas, both internal and those of lives of individual employees. On the other hand, this decoupling is what makes consumers totally unaware of whether and how much employees are abused in the process.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  This has been studied before of course. For instance: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435908000456 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435908... A Meta-Analysis of Relationships Linking Employee Satisfaction to Customer Responses "The authors report a meta-analysis of relationships linking employee job satisfaction to customer satisfaction and perceived service quality in studies that correlate employee data with customer data. Overall, both relationships are positive and statistically and substantively significant."
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Interesting. I skimmed the paper (thanks, SciHub!); as far as I understand it, the topic is restricted to employees dealing with customers directly - e.g. shop clerks, salesmen, service providers (e.g. people coming to your house to do something), etc. The meta-analysis reports a positive correlation of ~0.3 there. This seems to weakens my example with restaurant workers, and also possibly with the doctors (as much as people can shop around in this area). I do stand by the manufacturing example though, which represents the cases where a customer doesn't interact with an employee. Anyway, thanks for referencing an actual paper! I learned something today :).

Customers care about the quality of the product, which is arguably influenced by how happy workers are. But of course this link is very indirect and very different for different types of workers.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I'd say this link is very indirect; in fact, a lot of structure in companies exist solely to decouple the two. On the one hand this is sound - you want the end result to be independent of moods and dramas, both internal and those of lives of individual employees. On the other hand, this decoupling is what makes consumers totally unaware of whether and how much employees are abused in the process.

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
This has been studied before of course. For instance: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435908000456 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435908... A Meta-Analysis of Relationships Linking Employee Satisfaction to Customer Responses "The authors report a meta-analysis of relationships linking employee job satisfaction to customer satisfaction and perceived service quality in studies that correlate employee data with customer data. Overall, both relationships are positive and statistically and substantively significant."
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Interesting. I skimmed the paper (thanks, SciHub!); as far as I understand it, the topic is restricted to employees dealing with customers directly - e.g. shop clerks, salesmen, service providers (e.g. people coming to your house to do something), etc. The meta-analysis reports a positive correlation of ~0.3 there. This seems to weakens my example with restaurant workers, and also possibly with the doctors (as much as people can shop around in this area). I do stand by the manufacturing example though, which represents the cases where a customer doesn't interact with an employee. Anyway, thanks for referencing an actual paper! I learned something today :).