Editors note: Authors Leon Grunberg and Sarah Moore conducted a 10-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health tracking the work attitudes of several thousand Boeing employees. The University of Puget Sound professors reconnected with many of those employees and some newer ones for their book, “Emerging from Turbulence.”
Does it matter for companies such as Boeing that worker loyalty and emotional commitment seem to be loosening and becoming frayed?
Does it matter that a large segment of the Boeing workforce is disgruntled and no longer enamored with the company? At first glance and by several metrics, the answer for Boeing would seem to be “no” or “not much.”
With Boeing enjoying record orders far into the future, a stratospheric share price, healthy profits, and continuing steady increases in productivity, management might feel quite sanguine about reports of worker discontent and disengagement.
Moreover, enjoying massive compensation packages, top executives might also feel vindicated in the direction they took, arguing that they deserved such lavish awards rewards for doing a good job for their shareholders and customers.
At first glance, these are powerful arguments that Boeing executives can use to deflect and counter the criticism they receive from labor unions and many of their employees. The company is soaring. Where is the evidence of a problem?
Critics of the company’s postmerger policies contend that these good financial results mask underlying dangers that will emerge in the future to endanger the long-term health and vitality of the company. Many point out, for example, that the billions in cost overruns already incurred in the 787 program — overruns that will spread into the future and onto still-to-be-built and delivered planes — might seriously jeopardize Boeing’s long-term financial health.
Only time will tell if Boeing can move quickly enough down the learning curve to start making profit on the 787 planes it delivers. It can also be argued, as many human resource scholars do, that companies like Boeing lose a great deal of difficult-to-measure benefits in improved innovation, quality and productivity by not having a fully engaged and empowered workforce.
Conclusive evidence in support of such claims is invariably hard to find for a variety of methodological reasons, including the crucial fact that productivity and financial metrics are the result of multiple factors, making it hard to conduct carefully controlled studies.
In one sense, Boeing is fortunate as compared to many other large companies in that it produces a product that has a magical aura in the eyes of many employees.
As several told us, airplanes are remarkable machines, composed of hundreds of thousands of parts moving in close formation at 30,000 feet and safely carrying millions of passengers all over the world.
Even in this era of exciting technological advances, those who design and build these airplanes can still marvel at the sight of them taking off or flying overhead.
This magical quality gives Boeing a unique motivational tool that few other companies possess and mitigates the damaging effects produced by the new corporate culture.
Despite this advantage, there is evidence in the survey and narratives that Boeing still operates with a great deal of unused potential work effort.
From “Emerging from Turbulence,” by Leon Grunberg and Sarah Moore. Copyright © 2016 Rowman &Littlefield. Used by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or printed without permission in writing from the publisher.
Voices in ‘Emerging from Turbulence’
‘You know, Boeing ate up McDonnell Douglas, but we got a lot of their managers. Some of the dumbest decisions from the workers’ standpoint came from that union of those two companies.’
— Tech worker, age 62, thirty-five years at Boeing, interviewed in 2012
‘When I joined Boeing, it was cool, it was always fun, and even up to this day, like when the 777 first flew or when the 787 first flew, I get teary eyed watching the whole thing (laughs.) It’s amazing.’
— Engineer, unknown age, sixteen years total at Boeing, interviewed in 2012
‘I’m still kind of proud to say I work for Boeing, rather than at the dog pound or something. Compared to what I used to do, you know, people tend to treat you a little more seriously.’
— Quality assurance worker, age 56, twenty-five years at Boeing, interviewd in 2012
‘Engineers get to make the airplanes; we get to go up against the Airbus engineers. Mano a mano. It’s my engineers against your engineers. I like the competition; the company doesn’t.’
— Engineer, age 59, thirty-three years at Boeing, interviewed in 2012
‘The company’s number one goal is profits. I know it sounds cold, but it’s true. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. You know, if I was running a company, yeah, I gotta look out for profit margins because that reflects the health of the company. Workers rank right below that.’
— Mechanic, 27, one and a half years at Boeing, interviewed in 2014
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