Putting Fast Food Workers on the Career Fast Track

When Church’s Chicken recently celebrated the high school graduations of four of its valued employees, it made people in the Atlanta business community industry stand up and take notice.

It may have also spurred them to take a closer look at their definition of employee benefit programs — and specifically their education benefits — not just for those in traditional ‘white collar’ management jobs, but for all employees in their organizations.

A look behind the counter at Church’s decision to support a high school completion diploma program for its front-line workers who have aged out of traditional public school reveals some sound — and forward-looking — reasons for the company’s inclusion of all its employees as eligible for education benefits.

Glassdoor and other employee job satisfaction services demonstrate that front-line employees of fast food chains who are happy in their jobs praise their companies for offering “fast-paced,” “rewarding,” and “challenging” work days and career paths. They also often extol a chain’s “flexible schedules and fantastic hours” while providing sustainable living wages.

The chains that receive rave reviews are in many ways simply practicing good business: keeping employees happy means less turnover, which means less money spent on recruiting and higher returns on training, measured by enhanced employee skills and motivation.

But Church’s decided to take one step further. Its leadership asked: what more can be done to support our front-line workers in their longer-term career goals, and what skills and credentials will improve their social capital and economic mobility?

With 40 percent of restaurant workers living in poverty and just over 14 percent of non-union restaurant workers receiving benefits, compensation is a hot-button issue. And though states like California and New York are enacting laws to bring the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour, the national median hourly wage for fast-food workers is currently $8.94, and even the most generous employers can only help workers so much by paying them in the short term. Restaurant chains must invest in their employees for the long run and cultivate employees’ social capital in terms of the skills, values, and habits that allow them to build a sustainable career.

Beyond paid vacations, free meals, and even a 401k plan, Church’s envisioned a different kind of long-term investment: offering a fully subsidized high school completion program for workers over the age of 18 who lack a high school diploma. This decision is not simply a social good, it is an employee imperative as high school non-completers nationwide earn only 2/3 of what a typical high school graduate earns, and only about 55% of those with a bachelor’s degree. A career path without a high school degree is ripe with financial risk, unemployment and even higher rates of mortality.

For decades, investing in an employee’s accredited education has been seen as a “C-suite” perk or a targeted way to invest in white-collar workers on their path to the C-suite. But by investing in its front-line employees, the fast food industry can not only buck that trend, it can also start an entirely new one — the ‘democratization’ of education benefits for all.

The reality is, as wages increase for food service workers and the supply of candidates modestly expands, the number of non-food service jobs will increase for those same candidates.

Already, fast food restaurants increasingly source talent from the same pool as companies that employ customer service and sales representatives, technical support, educational aides, health care assistants and even postal workers — and that competitive dynamic makes offering accredited education an even more important part of a compelling proposition to prospective employees. This means providing more growth opportunities, not simply more money now. I envision a workplace where offering high school completion programs will most certainly become a growing trend and a vital part of a career pathway.

In the past, Church’s has done an excellent job of offering employees the kind of work flexibility they need to be able to take care of other responsibilities, like attending school or taking care of their family. Now one of the ways that Church’s will stay ahead of the curve is by paying for education for its front-line workers.

Indeed, Church’s realized that perhaps the most important way to attract and retain workers long-term would be to offer a career path, rather than just a gig that they can leave whenever something better comes along. In doing so, Church’s partners with education providers to deliver retention solutions for its frontline employees and, in the process, puts its fast food workers on the fast track.