Youth at Work: Best Practice in a Pizza Restaurant
Work in Progress at the University of Minnesota
James Stone
Classroom learning experiences are increasingly out of sync with the knowledge and skills youth need for their lifework. The mismatch between traditional schooling and today's workplace has led to the current interest in the school-to-work movement. Though discussions about school-to-work often refer to the "high performance workplace," few workplaces now meet that definition (especially those inclined to hire young people).
Today, a few thousand young people are benefiting from innovative efforts to move them into truly high skill workplaces. But where do millions of other adolescents gain their first work experience? Where they always have: in minimum skill, minimum wage workplaces. These are the fast food and retail shops that are proliferating across our economic landscape.
The rhetoric of the school-to-work movement largely ignores the realities of the workplace. If we are to move school-to-work to scale, we must consider the workplaces where young people are likely to gain employment. The food service industry and the retail industry provide employment for millions of young people. McDonald's alone employs 12 percent of all working adolescents.
Bringing School-to-Work to Scale: Retail and Fast Food Jobs
We at the NCRVE site at the University of Minnesota are studying ways of bringing school-to-work to scale in the context of retail and fast food jobs. One track of this study was a search for fast food employers who would consider ways to enhance the learning of their young workers. We have so far been unsuccessful in finding a firm willing to explore these interventions in a controlled study.
Our search for firms that are already doing some of the interventions led us to a Twin Cities pizza restaurant, Davanni's Pizza. This family-owned pizza restaurant, employing 40 to 60 young people in each of its fifteen stores, comes very close to embodying what we have defined as best practice in youth work places. They have an employee turnover rate that, while high by adult standards, is one-fourth the industry standard (the average employee stays two-and-a-half years to three years). And as a firm, they are actively engaged in their community.
Emerging Lessons from an Exemplary Company
Much of what is becoming clear about exemplary business practice at this pizza restaurant is not a surprise. Four themes emerge: building a culture of respect and trust; involving the parents; committing to the community; and enhancing the work environment by cross-training and developing skills.
Exemplary business practice at Davanni's Pizza includes:
- building a culture of respect and trust
- involving the parents
- committing to the community
- enhancing the work environment by cross-
training and developing skills.
1. Building a Culture of Respect and Trust Davanni's Pizza:
- Treats the young worker with respect. The average employee age is 22, and over half are teens. The company believes it has a responsibility to develop all its workers.
- Pays attention to the other part of young workers' lives. Monitors their progress at school and provides flexible scheduling so they can keep up with their school work.
- Structures duties around teamwork.
- Makes the new worker feel comfortable Has developed an extended and ongoing employee induction process.
- Provides employee counseling for work, school and family problems.
- Involves young workers in the job performance evaluations of their supervisors.
- Limits all employees, including managers, to 40 hours a week.
- Acknowledges special occasions and special contributions. This company gives small gifts for extraordinary contributions.
- Creates its own special events, such as "shop" parties, company picnics, and awards and incentives.
2. Involving Parents in Adolescents' Work Life Davanni's Pizza:
- Contacts parents the day a hiring decision is made. Sends a letter to parents that describes the company and the company expectations.
- Invites parents for a dinner, introduces them to the management staff, and gives contact information in case they have questions about the work of their child.
- Sends holiday cards to families.
3. Committing to the Community One of Davanni's Pizza stores:
- Belongs to Our Community, Our Youth, a local initiative that promotes the positive development of children and youth in a community-wide partnership with families. Its members include businesses, schools, local government, law enforcement, social services, religious organizations, students and parents. One strategy of this initiative is a "charity day" when cooperating businesses devote a day's profits to a "drug free" program in schools.
- The store has also been very active in the Education First initiative, which is supported and endorsed by the Minnesota Restaurant Association. The Education First guidelines address the major issues related to teen employees.
4. Staff Training Processes
Davanni's Pizza strives to enhance their work environment by:
- Building the skills up, not dumbing the job down. For example, unlike most of their larger competitors, this restaurant did not replace numbers with pictures on the cash registers. Instead, they work with their new workers to help them develop their math and computational skills as needed.
- Cross training. All employees learn all the tasks. This includes workers as young as 14. In-house certified trainers (who also act as mentors to new employees) conduct the training. Becoming a certified trainer requires a six-hour "train-the-trainer" program. Many of their certified trainers are teenagers.
- Maintaining ongoing informal evaluation.
- Connecting pay to learning and performance. Workers at our host company earn salary increases based on increased knowledge of the firm and firm operations. They obtain raises when they can demonstrate the skills or knowledge necessary for the next step on a "Performance Pay Chart."
Healthy Youth Development
The school-to-work movement aims at creating
self-sufficient, contributing members of the workforce and our future economy. For this to become a reality, young people must develop cognitively, socially, and personally.
All institutions in a society contribute to healthy youth
development, but especially work institutions where youth spend a great deal of time.
Davanni's Pizza has discovered that a commitment to youth development helps both the business and the kids. The business benefits by low turnover, profits, and high customer and employee satisfaction. The kids benefit by learning how education relates to their work life now and in the future.
The value to the students and community will be part of our next report. For more information about this project, please contact James R. Stone III or Theodore Lewis at the NCRVE site at the University of Minnesota, 1954 Buford Ave. R-460, St. Paul, MN 55108.
James R. Stone III , (612) 624-1795, FAX (612) 624-4720,
e-mail: STONE003@Maroon.tc.umn.edu
Theodore Lewis (612) 624-4707, FAX (612) 624-4720
Table of Contents | Next Article | Previous Article