Undercover Boss gives me really mixed feelings...
It's a TV show where CEOs go undercover as a recruit in various departments of their own company. I think it's wonderful for them to experience what their employees actually do and what issues they face. I wish everyone above the floor level would do that yearly in every company for every department they make decisions about.
The last segment of every episode is meeting with the people that trained their recruit persona and that's where my grievances start. They usually make some improvements to the work equipment, but mostly hand out a lot of personal gifts.
Now I have no objection to that itself, but they only interact with about 5 people of their 100-1000 employees, usually already a rank or two higher than the ones that do the majority of the work. Those few then receive tens of thousands of dollars in one time benefits in return for sharing their sob story on national TV, without addressing the structural overworking and underpayment that caused them to be struggling so much, or doing anything for the other 95-995 employees struggling equally much if not more.
They get so close to investigating what their business decisions mean for the people they employ, and then completely miss the mark about really caring for their workers, or their customers for that matter.
The last segment of every episode is meeting with the people that trained their recruit persona and that's where my grievances start. They usually make some improvements to the work equipment, but mostly hand out a lot of personal gifts.
Now I have no objection to that itself, but they only interact with about 5 people of their 100-1000 employees, usually already a rank or two higher than the ones that do the majority of the work. Those few then receive tens of thousands of dollars in one time benefits in return for sharing their sob story on national TV, without addressing the structural overworking and underpayment that caused them to be struggling so much, or doing anything for the other 95-995 employees struggling equally much if not more.
They get so close to investigating what their business decisions mean for the people they employ, and then completely miss the mark about really caring for their workers, or their customers for that matter.
