The Big Picture: Workforce

Younger Employees Lack Work Ethic, Operators Say

Turnover has remade the six-person custodial staff that cleans Hallmark’s employee dining facilities in Kansas City, Mo., leaving Corporate Services Manager Christine Rankin with a team she regards as ideal. “To a person, they’re fabulous,” she says, pausing, “and they’re all middle-aged.”

Experience has brought her into agreement with the sentiment revealed by The Big Picture about managing employees of a tender vintage. Rankin and other foodservice operators were asked if young staffers showed the same work ethic their predecessors did a decade ago. The question proved to be the equivalent of asking who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb.

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