Tyson: Frontline workers need flexibility too

Prior to COVID-19, safety was front and center at Tyson Foods facilities.

Then the pandemic hit, and Tyson was classed as an essential business because of its role in keeping the food supply chain operating normally throughout COVID-19. This meant its frontline workforce – which makes up 80% of its 137,000 worker population – couldn’t stay at home and had to continue to do their work on-site.

As a result, Tyson really dialed its focus on both the “health and safety of our workforce”, executive vice-president and chief people officer Johanna Söderström tells UNLEASH ahead of her appearance at UNLEASH America (25-26 May).

It became increasingly clear to Tyson and Söderström’s team that health and safety “go hand in hand”. So Tyson pivoted quickly to implement a range of COVID-19 health and safety measures for its on-site workers.

Söderström explains: “We were probably ahead of the game. We acquired and provided masks for our team members early on (before they became encouraged or mandated). We assembled barriers in our production facilities between the stations where team members work. We did temperate checks.”

Tyson further offered on-site testing, as well as hired 200 nurses and support staff to help with this effort to keep everyone in the facilities safe.

Inside Tyson’s vaccine mandate

But in order to achieve its goal of protecting employees’ health and safety, Tyson decided to go a few steps further than some other employers.

“We made sure we used every single tool in the toolbox” – and so when the COVID-19 vaccines were approved, Tyson decided to implement a vaccine mandate.

The food giant did this in August 2021 – before US President Joe Biden introduced his federal mandate. While Biden’s mandate has been overturned by the Supreme Court, Tyson’s mandate (with some religious and medical exemptions) remains in force.

Söderström shares that between August and the deadline of November 2021, “we did a lot of training, a lot of information sessions” to combat the misinformation out there that might be preventing Tyson’s employees from wanting to get vaccinated.

Tyson also opened more than 200 on-site vaccination clinics and used bonuses to incentivize employees to get the jab.

When November came, 97% of our workforce (119,000 individuals at this point) was vaccinated – this meant Tyson had to terminate 3% of its workforce (approximately 3,570 workers).

In 2021, Tyson also decided to hire its first chief medical officer – Dr Claudia Coplein. Coplein will support the employer on its “overall strategy for wellbeing”. Tyson wants to have “a holistic approach to wellbeing” – there are four tenets: social, physical, emotional and financial.

Coplein’s work includes opening health clinics in rural parts of the US where it is hard to access affordable healthcare. Through these clinics, these employees (and their families) will be able to access free healthcare, including preventative treatment.

Flexibility for the frontline

Another new initiative introduced by Tyson during COVID-19 was an engagement survey. “We started in 2020, and [we] are now launching our third survey” with the help of Glint.

Employee surveys help Tyson respond to the needs and desires of employees. According to Söderström, it allowed Tyson to understand what additional support employees needed around wellbeing – and as a result, the food giant introduced new telemedicine benefits, including online counseling.

The survey also enabled Tyson to identify that although frontline workers were unable to work from home, they still wanted flexibility working options.

Söderström notes that Tyson’s office-based workers are in the office three days a week – “when you create an atmosphere and culture that people are drawn to, they will want to come together in person”.

But now Tyson has “started to construct flexibility” for frontline workers “by looking at shift schemes in different ways”.

Söderström adds: “Rather than doing the traditional five days or five eight-hour shifts, we have been piloting three or four days [a week] with various hours”. For Söderström, this is a “gig economy concept”.

Tyson’s approach could also create a job-sharing model, which has traditionally been applied to in-office work. “You might bring back two employees returning from maternity leave who will split an eight or ten-hour shift”, explains Söderström.

The idea is that returning mothers, for instance, may not want to do a full shift, but they would be more than happy to do half a shift if they could fit it around their new caregiving responsibilities.

Another scenario could be having two truck drivers who won’t want to be away from home for long periods of time. Now they can “share a route and hand off a truck halfway”. In this example, the job share would be between someone “who wants to work in a certain geographical area of the route, and someone else [who wants] another part”.

Flexibility and the war for talent

“We can open up endless models and opportunities” for frontline flexibility, notes Söderström.

For Tyson, the idea isn’t that employees will fill the time they now aren’t working at Tyson with jobs at other companies – “we are investing in livable wages and total rewards instead of minimum wages”. “What is the amount of money can you live on in today’s environment so you don’t have to work around the clock at several employers to feed your family?”

Söderström is clear that employees need time off to improve their “overall health and wellbeing”.

It is, therefore, no surprise that Söderström believes that listening to the needs of frontline workers around flexibility will allow companies to “stay ahead” of the ‘Great Resignation’. Remember, a lack of flexible working options is a major cause of the ongoing war for talent.

“I believe that we will be able to bring more employees back to the workforce if we can offer more gig economy models”, according to Söderström.

This is because employees are rethinking what they want from their lives – “work is not top of the list any longer”, they want the flexibility to spend more time with their families and on their hobbies. And, importantly, they are happy to leave their jobs for different employers that offer them this flexibility.

Frontline workers also need tech

Of course, it is much easier said than done to offer flexible working options, particularly to frontline workers who are not in one location.

Söderström believes that “technology will be key to help us schedule and keep track of preferences”, as well as “allow employers to exchange shifts and routes”.

But she is clear that not just any tech will work for frontline workers. It needs to be accessible on mobile devices and be simple to use – two standout tools that Tyson use are Workday and Beekeeper.

Beekeeper is a workplace communication tool; Söderström shares that it enables “our team members to interact and communicate with each other” whether they are on the frontline, in the office, or at home.

Tyson has been working with Workday since 2019, but it is now taking advantage of its mobile-enabled platform.

The food giant is also now working with ServiceNow for auto-translation of communications between employees. ServiceNow’s translation tech “allows you to chat with someone through your device using your language” and that is then translated into the receiver’s language. “This is an exciting change for our team members [which is] going live later this year”, shares Söderström.

Ultimately, for Tyson and Söderström technology is the key to driving the best employee experience. It is essential that employees have access to the same quality of technology that they rely on in their personal lives – workplace tech should make their lives easier, not harder.

Tyson, therefore, aims to have an employee experience “that uses [the right] technology to enable our employees to their work, connect and get everything accomplished” with “simplicity”

It is clear that top-notch technology is a passion area for Söderström, and Tyson as a whole.

“I am really intrigued to see where technology can take the HR function. It is not often that we naturally marry technology with HR…[but] I am really excited to see what’s around the corner and where different technology can take us,” Söderström concludes.

Want to find out more about how Tyson is using tech to empower frontline workers? Johanna Söderström will be speaking at UNLEASH America in Las Vegas (25-26 May).