Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 26, 1995                   TAG: 9503240063
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SUSANA BARCIELA KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T IGNORE WORKERS' WOES: MARRIOTT FINDS OFFERING HELP PAYS OFF

Why should any employer care about such personal problems?

Because, often, they are the very problems that keep employees from delivering the best performance on the job.

``When these associates carry all these problems to work,'' said Gordon Lambourne, spokesman for Marriott International, ``it has a tremendous impact on the quality of service to the guests at that hotel.''

The challenge is to find ways to help employees resolve personal conflicts without acting like Big Brother or throwing money into a bottomless well.

One innovative approach is Marriott's Associate Resource Line. First tested in Florida last year, with the company's 17 sites and 6,000 employees, the 24-hour hot line offers free, confidential advice and referrals - in several languages.

Few service companies have attempted to tackle these issues so directly.

``The fundamental issues revolve around low-wage jobs and high turnover,'' said Len Schlesinger, a professor at Harvard Business School and an expert on the service work force.

``This is not the answer. It is an answer,'' he said. ``We should be celebrating the attempt.''

For the older employee who called Marriott's hot line, it meant getting a suggestion on shared housing that led to a plan for her own move.

For the embarrassed woman, it meant not having to give her name to get a referral to a marriage counselor.

And for the anxious father, it meant finding a community agency that had Spanish-speaking social workers, experience with teen-agers on drugs and a sliding scale for fees.

``He was so upset he ended up in tears,'' said Pat Sergio, who oversees the social workers and other specialists who talk to the Marriott callers. Sergio is director of special initiatives at the Partnership Group, the suburban Philadelphia company Marriott hired to develop and run the hot line.

Family-friendly services have come into vogue in the last few years, but they have appealed mostly to upscale professionals. Marriott, for example, found that its child care referral service wasn't helping hourly workers, said Donna Klein, director of work-life programs for Marriott International in Washington.

So the company aimed Resource Line directly at the workers who make up 80 percent of its work force, people with average wages of $6.10 per hour.

In that group - employees who can make or break a company's service - job churn is epidemic.

Typical of the industry, Marriott's annual turnover among hourly workers is 300 percent. The same food-server position, for example, could be filled by five people in one year.

For workers with little money who may be new to the country or a community, the options are limited when they need help.

Marriott found that some managers were spending up to half their time counseling employees, arranging transportation, talking to employees' family members - social work they didn't necessarily do well.

``In a lot of cases, if employees have some problem, their solution is to quit,'' Klein said. ``They may not come to the manager. They just don't show up.''

In effect, Resource Line substitutes telephone counseling for face-to-face management time. While not always a wise trade-off, it's a good choice given the work force, Schlesinger suggests - not only because of the range of problems, but because language and cultural differences can overwhelm even the most competent managers.

For Resource Line to work, Klein knew it had to provide access to low-cost or free services and be sensitive to cultural and language differences. Florida callers who don't speak English are offered on-line translators who speak Spanish, Creole and French.

The results of the $100,000 Florida test were enough to persuade Marriott to expand the experiment. Pilot programs are now under way in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver and Texas.

``There is a pay-back,'' Klein said. She calculated a significant savings of management time. Add to that lower turnover, absenteeism and tardiness, and improved employee loyalty and focus on the job.

``Lots of other service employers ought to be looking at the Marriott strategy,'' Schlesinger said, ``because any intervention is a big plus.''