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Abstract

Routine, manual, or blue-collar workers play a substantial role in delivering public services, especially at the local level. Despite their prevalence, scholars know little about the specifics of managing these human resources. This contribution challenges common stereotypes about blue-collar workers and argue a truly inclusive knowledge base on public-sector human resource management (HRM) must include these workers. Building upon the job characteristics model and the Ability–Motivation–Opportunity (AMO) model of HRM that links ability-, motivation-, and opportunity- HRM practices to job performance, a research agenda is put forward aiming to better understand blue-collar workers in government. Researchers are challenged to study blue-collar workers in government to truly construct both inclusive workplaces and an inclusive knowledge base in public personnel or public HRM research.

Keywords

blue-collar workers human resource management inclusive workplaces local government public service

Introduction

Public employees are at the center of government and are the most critical input for accomplishing the work of the state. The centrality of employees in producing public value has led to growth in research on human resource management (HRM) with a distinct focus on incorporating the context of the public sector into theory and practice (Boselie et al., 2021). While this growth has improved the ability to manage people as employees in government, the complete shutdown of many cities and states across the globe in 2020 to combat the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a major gap in the knowledge base of public sector HRM—the importance of routine manual or blue-collar work in the public sector in keeping the state going and what it looks like to manage these employees (De Matteis, 2021; Lancet, 2020).

That is, public HRM research mostly focuses on white-collar or knowledge workers, employees who perform managerial, administrative, or professional (higher-skilled) work in government (e.g., top-civil servants, policy advisors, tax inspectors). Where public HRM research focuses on public employees who may do more hands-on or “dirty work” (Mastracci, 2022; Redden & Scarduzio, 2018), the focus is on street-professional jobs (e.g., cops, teachers, nurses, and social workers) where employees face challenging, varied, and often dangerous situations requiring discretion and therefore necessitate complicated and nuanced people management (see the street-level bureaucracy literature, such as Brockmann, 2017; Gofen, 2014; Shim et al., 2021; Tummers & Bekkers, 2014). These street-level professionals may vary in terms of requirements for formal university-based education, but they all receive specialized training to help direct their discretion-laden activity toward the public good.

In contrast, blue-collar workers do routine manual work that traditionally may not require significant discretion as part of the job description, but it is work necessary and important for health, safety, and public value. These blue-collar workers play a particularly important role at the local government level, where the average citizen may be directly accessing public services. Indeed, as many government offices across the world shut down in 2020, knowing government was still there in its basic operations—that our trash would be picked up, that buses would still be running if needed, that streets would be kept tidy—signaled to citizens that even in a time of extreme crisis, the state was maintaining its operations. For these workers, they kept doing their jobs, often deemed legally essential, putting themselves at physical risk in doing so. The fact that these workers are largely ignored in public HRM research is problematic on a number of level, with the most important being that scholars need to understand the working experiences of these workers to promote social equity in the government workforce. Jobs have changed over time, with growth in jobs with lower education requirements and less security and these jobs are often held by women, non-Whites, and immigrant workers (Kalleberg, 2011). In government, HRM researchers should look at those positions operating in government, what they do, and who holds them to understand the full landscape of public services and develop a full picture of social equity in public employment.

Blue-collar government workers are ignored by public administration scholars perhaps due to assumptions that include but are not limited to the idea that these jobs are not where our public administration students will go to work, or are so routine that they are not worth scholarly attention to develop targeted HRM practices, or that there is nothing particularly “public” about these positions that would require developing specific public HRM theories and practices to improve the management of these workers (rare exceptions to this gap are the work of Davis, 2011; Emmert & Taher, 1992; Munro & Rainbird, 2002; Rainbird et al., 1999). However, as concerns about social equity have grown in public administration, from the point of view of citizens and the public workforce, to foster full inclusion in government, from the perspective of both theory and practice, research on these blue-collar workers and their HRM needs is an imperative (Gooden & Portillo, 2011; Guy & McCandless, 2012; Meier, 2023).

Hence, time has come to pay more attention to blue-collar workers in government if societies are to truly build both inclusive workplaces and an inclusive knowledge base (Moon & Christensen, 2020; Sabharwal, 2014). Many government workers are employed in blue-collar occupations. These are positions that provide stable employment for many individuals; blue-collar positions provide workers, those with less formal education, living wages, benefits, and a place in their community. This employment—and how these workers are treated in their positions—sends important signals as to how government values them.

While these workers often go unnoticed, this routine work affects many areas of the average citizen’s well-being, so that, when these workers are unable or unwilling to do their job (which could happen with the current “great resignation”), this impacts not only government performance but also its image in the eyes of the public. Scholars should include blue-collar positions in the study of HRM in government because of social equity concerns in terms of these positions providing stable and dignified employment in our local communities, practical performance concerns in terms of the role of these workers in producing public values and what is needed to manage them effectively.

As little empirical work has been done on these workers, there are many unanswered questions about what studying these workers means for our understandings of social equity and HRM in the public sector. This article first reviews the prevalence of these workers at the local government level and posit why they are necessary to study in public administration and public HRM research. Next, the job characteristics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) is utilized to develop questions about the nature of jobs for blue-collar public servants and how they experience and are engaged in their jobs. Then, the structure of the existing HRM model of Ability–Motivation–Opportunity (AMO) practices is applied (ability-, motivation-, and opportunity-enhancing practices; see Appelbaum et al., 2000; Bos-Nehles et al., 2013; Boxall & Macky, 2009) to raise questions about what ways public sector HRM systems and practices may need to be adjusted theoretically and practically to build inclusive HRM for blue-collar workers.

Government Blue-Collar Workers

To begin building a research agenda to include blue-collar workers in the public HRM discourse, it is important to understand how many blue-collar workers there are in government and why this matters to the study of public administration. While many workers considered blue-collar (e.g., sanitation workers) have been the focus on debates about privatization in government to promote government efficiency and this creates questions about whether these jobs are fundamentally public jobs and the value for a jurisdiction to keep them as government job (see Boyne, 1998; Donahue, 1989; Warner & Hebdon, 2001 for different perspectives on this argument), a current review of labor statistics in a number of countries demonstrates that there are still many government-employed blue-collar workers at the local level. Therefore, incorporating these workers into public administration and public HRM literature allows us to examine questions about whether these services should remain government services, the benefits or costs of that (from both an economic lens and a social equity lens), and then how to effectively manage these workers to produce high performance.

Defining Blue-Collar Government Workers

In the broader social and behavioral sciences, research on blue-collar workers generally refrains from formally defining blue-collar work, leaving it to the reader to infer from the choice of the research sample what is meant by blue-collar work. However, zooming out, one sees investigated occupational groups have in common the performance of work that includes “. . . physically oriented, body-centered activities . . . in the interest of a livelihood” (Roebuck & Hickson, 1982, p. 92). That is, blue-collar workers perform manual work, often with their hands, in contrast to white-collar workers who mainly perform “head” or knowledge work. Furthermore, in contrast to knowledge workers and street-level bureaucrats, blue-collar workers receive limited years of formal education. Hence, in the popular language as well as in the academic literature, blue-collar work is often described as “elementary,” ‘lower educated, “low skilled” and even “unskilled” work (see the Gunnarsdóttir & Björnsdóttir, 2003; International Labour Organization, 2004; Sanders et al., 2011).

Blue-collar work is often categorized as “dirty work,” whether or not this categorization actually matches the work in reality (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2014). Dirty work is defined as “tasks and occupations that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading” (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999, p. 413). When an individual’s occupation is perceived this way, it can lead to stigma attached to the work and challenges to the identity of individuals who hold these positions. When those individuals also come from target populations that are marginalized, such as ethnic or racial minorities, these negative perceptions can compound. Understanding who holds these jobs in terms of demographics and the nature of the work done by the workers holding these jobs is essential to shed light on these positions in government.

Traditionally, in private sector studies, blue-collar workers are employed in factories, as this is where the term blue-collar work was coined. However, in government, next to manual labor and limited formal education, this work involves additional defining characteristics. Blue-collar work in government may be occurring in public spaces like public transport or out in the open air like public parks. Furthermore, blue-collar workers have direct encounters with citizens either because of their job requirements or just because they work in public spaces. When these workers appear in the public administration knowledge base, again scholars have generally focused more on questions of whether government should stay in the business of doing this work or contract it out to private providers (see Donahue, 1989; Vrangbæk et al., 2015 for a few examples). These are economic arguments for privatization, which could produce efficiencies for the community as a whole; however, research has demonstrated that privatization trends lead to wage penalties and negative impacts on blue-collar workers, in particular on women and minorities, where government employment provided stability and financial security (Brown & Kellough, 2020; Dube & Kaplan, 2010; Gill-McLure & Seifert, 2008; Stein, 1994).

Therefore, a prime area for future research is on the question of government blue-collar workers and what this tells us about the tension of various public administration values in a local government community. When a local government considers diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in relation to its government workforce, what choices does it make about the size of the workforce and who falls within that workforce? Blue-collar work in government is fundamentally tied to questions of inclusion and social equity. Blue-collar workers in government are government workers, employed by the government unit (not a contract employee), which means changes in ideas about how government should be run impacts their work directly. Therefore, some questions for public HRM scholars to explore include what political or organizational factors influence the choice to keep blue-collar workers employed in local governments (versus contracting out)? What does this tell us about the overall workforce and HRM philosophy and approach in these local governments in terms of questions of social equity and inclusion?

In particular, the role of civil service protections, labor laws, and labor organizations influence how workers are treated and therefore could play an important role in understanding how blue-collar workers in particular are treated in government and how their workplace needs as government workers are balanced against other political or economic values (Hays & Sowa, 2006; Kearney & Mareschal, 2014; Mareschal, 2018). In the United States, there is significant variation across the states in terms of the role of labor unions in the public sector, raising questions about equity for government workers across jurisdictions. Within the public HRM literature, there has been a decline in attention to labor unions in general, but with a resurgence of attention to labor relations in the United States in practice and more comparative studies of HRM systems and practices across nations, comparative studies of blue-collar workers across countries with different labor relations regimes would add significant insight to the public HRM literature on multiple dimensions. Finally, from a DEI and social equity perspective, scholars also need to understand whether blue-collar workers employed by local governments have better outcomes than those employed by private organizations. Are there differences in quality of life, satisfaction, economic well-being, and the like? Examining these questions through the lens of public HRM research allow for surfacing insights on social equity in local communities and understandings on how governments value citizens and workers.

Prevalence of Blue-Collar Workers

While government blue-collar workers exist at all levels of government (i.e., federal, state, county, and municipal), they are most prevalent at the local government level (county and municipal). Therefore, to highlight the challenges of bounding or defining this set of workers, this article focuses on the local government level.

Occupational classification systems—centralized government systems that classify workers into groups of positions along numerous dimensions—can provide insight into the definition and operationalization of blue-collar workers in government. For example, in the United States, this system is called O*NET OnLine (2022), operated by the U.S. Department of Labor; the European Union (2022) has the European Skills/ Competencies, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) system, and Australia and New Zealand share the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) system (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021). To demonstrate the complexity of bounding this workforce for future empirical examination, data on local government employees in one country, the United States, are used combining data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, 2021) with information from the job classification systems provided by O*NET OnLine (2022) and the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) (International Labour Organization, 2016). In addition, the Online Appendix provides comparison data for the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

According to the BLS (2021), there were 5,403,340 local government employees, working in more than 562 different occupations in May 2020, following the Standard Occupation Classification. Unfortunately, BLS clusters occupations using job duties, but does not provide the background coding of these occupations required to single out blue-collar workers from other categories of occupations. O*NET OnLine (2022) offers some guiding directions by providing data about the required educational level for each occupation, using a typology of five different job zones. Given that blue-collar occupations require limited years of formal education, only the first three job zones are relevant for our purpose: (a) occupations in job zone 1 require little to no formal education, experience, and preparation; (b) occupations in job zone 2 generally require a high school diploma, some experience, and up to a year of “working with an experienced employee”; and (c) occupations in job zone 3 require training in vocational schools, extensive on-the-job training, and a license exam.

Like the BLS, O*NET does not specifically identify blue-collar jobs. Luckily, this information can be derived from the classification developed by the ISCO-08. Specifically, the ISCO-08 classification scheme clusters occupations under nine major categories, where categories 6 through 9 are generally considered blue-collar occupations (Choi et al., 2020). However, in examining these categories, it becomes clear that various street-level bureaucrat occupations (e.g., police, firefighters, compliance officers, and construction and building inspectors) are also listed as blue-collar occupations in this scheme. In a similar vein, various customer service occupations (e.g., office clerks and secretaries) are also listed as blue-collar occupations, whereas these positions require little manual labor and are more service oriented jobs that therefore could be considered pink collar or lower-paid white-collar positions (Mastracci, 2016). Finally, the list also includes first-line supervisors of blue-collar occupations; because these supervisors have different duties, they are excluded from the count.

Combining data from O*Net, ISCO-08, and the BLS and after removing street-level bureaucrat occupations, service occupations, and supervisors from the data, Table 1 (in the Supplemental Appendix) lists all blue-collar occupations that have more than 10,000 employees, including landscaping and groundskeeping, highway maintenance workers, bus drivers, electricians, mechanics, and refuse and recyclable material collectors. Considering the full list of blue-collar occupations (computations available upon request), there were approximately 955,790 blue-collar workers, which is 17.69% of all local government employees in the United States (most of these workers, 14.05% of all employees, are occupied in the occupations listed in Supplemental Appendix Table 1).

This is not an insignificant number of workers, which merits the study of these workers for better understanding local government and in relation to questions of HRM. Moving forward, across countries, scholars need to understand how many of these positions remain with government and why (isolating factors that influence the privatization decision at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century), who fills them, and what that means for building equitable and inclusive communities. Especially in challenging economic and social times, government can be instrumental in improving the conditions of its citizens and their jobs (Kalleberg, 2011). Stable, blue-collar positions at the local government level may be a way to foster social equity outcomes that could have impacts on individuals, communities, and government operations. But, researchers need to understand the landscape of these workers, the costs, and benefits for performance, what it means for workers in those positions and for broader communities to make decisions that balance competing public values for workers and communities. In addition, scholars should systematically analyze what these positions look like in terms of their job characteristics for HRM theory and practice.

The Jobs Characteristics of Government Blue-Collar Workers

While all jobs vary, there are certain components of jobs that can be studied to understand what it means to do the work associated with those jobs—for the individuals in those positions, for management, and for the organization. The job characteristics model put forward by Hackman and Oldham (1976) provides a useful lens to exploring the conditions of work, as it considers the characteristics of jobs and how those characteristics affect the motivation of workers and their overall well-being. The characteristics include (a) skill variety—what different skills and talents are required to do the work of the position, (b) task identity—whether one completes a whole task, from beginning to end, seeing the ultimate outcome of the task, (c) task significance—whether the job has a “substantial impact on the lives or work of other people,” both in the organization and in the external environment, (d) autonomy—the degree of freedom provided the worker doing the job in terms of schedule and the way the work is done, and (e) feedback—does the individual doing the work get feedback on their performance? (Hackman and Oldham, 1976, pp. 257–258). It is assumed that jobs with higher skill variety, task identity, and task significance lead to workers experiencing meaningful work and to be engaged in their jobs. When workers have autonomy in how they do their work, experience their work as meaningful, and receive feedback on their work, they should be more satisfied, maintain high levels of engagement, and be less likely to leave their positions.

Because of limited empirical research, it is only possible to speculate on the characteristics of blue-collar jobs in government and draw on research from the private sector. When considering blue-collar work, there are often stereotypes attached to it, that those doing this work are simply making a living and do not have meaning invested in their work or are interested in career success (Hennequin, 2007). These stereotypes may assume the job characteristics of blue-collar work are lesser than knowledge workers; however, these characteristics may just look different than in those positions (and indeed may vary across blue-collar positions in government). Indeed, studies of blue-collar workers in the private sector have demonstrated that management often fundamentally misunderstands the nature of this work and this can lead to a disconnect when implementing HRM practices from the top-down (Burawoy, 1982; Roy, 1959). Just because blue-collar government requires working with one’s hands versus in an office does mean that this work cannot be meaningful and challenging to employees (Roy, 1959). While they may do more routine work with lesser task complexity, this does not mean that these workers are disengaged or do not build learning and experience on the job that could lead to meaningful work (Decius et al., 2021). Indeed, in a study comparing blue- and white-collar workers in state government, Cherniss and Kane (1987) found that white-collar workers rated their positions lower on the various job characteristics and found no difference in job satisfaction.

Skill Variety, Task Identity, and Task Significance

Despite requiring fewer formal education, this does not mean that blue-collar work is “brainless.” Often, blue-collar collar workers develop considerable amounts of tacit knowledge, learned on the job, to perform their duties well. Knowledge developed on the job, often through years of experience and transmitted to new employees through the job, should be recognized and valued in government agencies, even if the knowledge is associated with routine work (Schmidt, 1993). From a HRM perspective, scholars need to understand this knowledge development process—how managers can encourage it, how it can be built into job descriptions, how the knowledge can be integrated into performance management processes, and how governments can ensure this knowledge is not lost if employees turnover in the organization.

In terms of tasks, researchers also need to be careful about the assumptions they make based on the routine nature of the work. A worker repairing a street may be able to see how their actions, step by step, lead to a drivable street that does produce flat tires from potholes and unhappy citizens. A municipal bus driver, while having a fixed route, may help individuals with disabilities navigate successfully around the city, enable older individuals to maintain their independence, and ensure that children get to school on time. While certain tasks may be compartmentalized or segmented, in government, there are many blue-collar positions where workers can see the “whole” of what they are doing, impacting their perceptions of the meaningfulness of their work.

In addition, these positions do work that is important and significant for the outcomes of the local governments—but this importance and significance depend on whether it is recognized and communicated. Blue-collar workers are on the ground in local government—they may be witness to important information that can be fed back into the design and operation of government services that could lead to performance improvements; the question is whether or not this is recognized and how this information is harnessed. While the nature of skills and tasks may be more straightforward on paper, in practice, failing to manage their workers and value their perspective could cost governments on a number of dimensions of performance. More research is welcome that surfaces instances of blue-collar government workers in their day-to-day practice to identify what are the ways in which they interact with citizens, what are the ways in which they may be witnessed to issues or areas for government improvements, and how is that information captured (if at all).

In addition to the impact on government, negative ideas or social constructions about low skilled or “easy work” could lead to problematic assumptions that impact both workers and the citizens they are serving in these jobs. The level of training and abilities required for jobs shapes the self-esteem individuals derive from their work, with self-esteem defined as “. . . one’s subjective appraisal of how one is faring with regard to being a valuable, viable, and sought-after member of the groups and relationships to which one belongs and aspires to belong” (Leary & Baumeister, 2000, p. 2). Self-esteem includes a self-verification process, where one makes sense of how they fit into the world and how others value them (Cast & Burke, 2002). Scholars distinguish between two dimensions, being competence (efficacy-based self-esteem) and worth (worth-based self-esteem) (Cast & Burke, 2002; Leary & Baumeister, 2002). While research on self-esteem is abundant in the psychology literature, there remain debates on how it is related (or functional) to specific outcomes (e.g., performance, well-being, health) (Ferris et al., 2010; Judge & Bono, 2001). Therefore, developing additional HRM research in government blue-collar workers’ abilities and requirements for positions to surface insights into the self-esteem and self-worth perceptions attached to these jobs and how this may or may not connect to individual and organizational outcomes is important to advance our knowledge of both inclusive HRM practices and local government performance.

Therefore, for future research, scholars are invited to investigate, at the local government level, what is the skill variety associated with different classifications of blue-collar positions. How is that skill variety communicated to employees and what does it mean for government performance? Do different blue-collar positions have unique perspectives on policy implementation that could be harnessed for performance improvements? Are blue-collar workers encouraged to share the knowledge they develop on the job to shape organizational practices and outcomes (e.g., job designs, work practices, assessments of outcomes)? Future research should explore how blue-collar workers understand the tasks they complete in their work. How does that understanding develop—is it influenced by co-workers, managers, and/or citizens and how does this operate over time to construct meaningful work? Finally, more research is needed to understand how does blue-collar workers’ view of their skills and tasks influence their self-esteem and their perceptions of the meaningfulness and value of their work.

Autonomy and Feedback

In addition to skills and tasks, there are unanswered questions as to the role of autonomy as generally conceptualized in the broader HRM literature and how this translates into blue-collar positions in the public sector. Traditionally, there are assumptions in the general management literature that blue-collar jobs are positioned at the bottom of the organizational (prestige) hierarchy, characterized by limited (decision) autonomy, routinization work, and direct supervision (Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006; Huang, 2011). These workers may experience restrictions on the job in terms of areas to grow in their work (both in terms of vertical promotion and job enrichment and growth). However, autonomy, while important to many HRM outcomes, may work differently for blue-collar workers and this difference needs to be built into HRM models and practices.

Some studies of blue-collar workers have found that these workers can often exhibit significant autonomy in terms of the choices they make in doing their work, developing internal work cultures where they are more accountable to their group members than they are to their supervisor and seek to find the fun and joy in their work (Ackroyd & Crowdy, 1990; Roy, 1959). In government, these blue-collar workers may be working apart from managers–in public spaces, buildings, in public transport, and out in the open air in the case of park and greenspace maintenance and road work. Consequently, these workers may have to make decisions without direct supervision and, hence, studies of these workers similar to Kaufman’s (1960) study of organizational socialization and control in the Forest Service are needed to understand how these workers behave outside of direct supervision. Scholars need to understand what autonomy looks like (practically and theoretically) for these workers; autonomy can reduce job stress among employees, but how this autonomy is structured and experienced by the workers matters (Kalleberg et al., 2009).

These workers, when out in the community, are visible manifestations of government to citizens. How they behave in their workplaces and roles can be easily observed by citizens, requiring examination on how citizens perceive these workers as representations of government and whether this outward facing, citizen or public encounter component of their positions is sufficiently addressed in training and HRM associated with these workers (see Goodsell, 1981 for a classic discussion of the public encounter and Hand & Catlaw, 2019 for a more recent discussion of this). In relation to autonomy, when interacting with the citizenry, they may be exercising discretion in ways not readily accounted for in their position descriptions or in the assumptions about what autonomy is for these workers. Research should investigate how blue-collar workers are trained on the citizen-state encounter and the importance of this (Guy, 2021). For example, municipal bus drivers routinely drive all segments of the population—how do they treat different members of the public? How do they balance job requirements (e.g., meeting route times) with these interactions (e.g., giving an older individual or an individual with disabilities sufficient time to get on the bus and get settled)? Workers in public parks and recreation facilities, and custodians in public buildings may routinely interact with citizens, both formally and informally. Therefore, it is important to fully understand how blue-collar workers are trained in the public encounter. How do they view discretion in their work? Do they welcome it or does exercising discretion make these workers uncomfortable? How do they conceptualize interactions with the public in terms of requirements for service standards? Does the ability to interact with the public matter for these workers in terms of their well-being and meaning attached to their work, as relational components of work can impact how people experience their work (Van der Voet & Steijn, 2021)?

The final component of job characteristics is the degree of feedback given to workers in their positions. Research shows ample of evidence that there are significant problems and challenges with performance appraisals overall in government and the effective use of performance information use in government (S. E. Kim & Rubianty, 2011; Kroll, 2015; Selden et al., 2001). While this is a larger question than just a HRM one, as stated, there are unanswered questions as to what kind of feedback blue-collar workers receive on their performance and what this means for performance improvement and individual and organizational learning. If their work is assumed to be straightforward and routine, their performance appraisals may simply focus on those measures easy to capture, such as time between stops on a bus, without failing to capture the other aspects of doing this work that may matter for both the employee and the citizens, such as their interactions and the overall service climate put forward by the worker. In addition, receiving meaningful feedback on one’s performance, in a performance meeting periodically with supervisors, can influence the degree of support employees feel and the degree to which they believe their work is valued by the organization. Therefore, more research is welcome on what kind of performance information is captured on these workers? How is their performance appraised? Do they have meaningful performance feedback discussions with supervisors and how does this impact their well-being and performance?

Blue-collar workers in government play a critical role in providing inclusive government service, but scholars have little understanding of how this works, whether it is meaningful for these workers, how they are trained on this, and the impact on citizens from these public encounters. So far, questions from the perspective of the jobs of these workers are raised. Next, the article turns to questions about HRM processes and practices and how they may differ in relation to blue-collar workers in government and what this means for government performance.

The AMO Model of HRM and Blue-Collar Work

An effective HRM process should lead to happy and motivated workers and high performance on the part of the government agency or unit. Scholars have coalesced around certain practices, both individually and in bundles, that connect individual employee performance to larger organizational performance to achieve that performance (Blom et al., 2020; Boxall, 2012; Messersmith et al., 2011). Referred to as high-performance work practices (HPWPs) or high-impact work practices, governments need to have both the right practices for the employees they are managing, and those practices need to be implemented well (Gould-Williams, 2004; Lindorff, 2009; Mostafa et al., 2015). HPWPs should be tailored to the nature of the work being done by the organization, the current conditions facing the organization, and other temporal and political factors that may be unique to the government unit or agency; HPWPs are fundamentally about harness the distinct competitive advantage of one’s workforce and maximizing existing and future human resources. Therefore, when considering HPWPs in relation to blue-collar government workers versus knowledge workers, it is critical to consider whether those practices will differ in design, operation, and why.

What HRM practices help employees perform well? Employees will perform well when they are

(1) able to do so (they can do the job because they possess the necessary skills and knowledge); (2) they have the motivation to do so (they will do the job because they want to and are adequately rewarded for their behavior); and (3) their working environment provides the opportunity—that is, the support and avenues necessary to enable the desired behavior (Bos-Nehles et al., 2013, p. 862).

Referred to as the AMO model of HRM (Appelbaum et al., 2000), which specifically highlights the way in which various HRM practices enable high performance, this model varies across scholars in terms of which practices are emphasized (Jiang et al., 2012; Lepak & Snell, 2002). But the AMO model provides a useful framework for identifying HPWPs and which ones to prioritize for organizations (Obeidat et al., 2016). Recognizing that not all the possible practices with each component of the model can be explored in this article, the following highlights several components in each and how these may look different when applied to blue-collar workers.

Ability-Enhancing Practices

How individual performance can be influenced by HRM practices, with the goal of leveraging it for organizational performance, starts with ensuring a well-trained and competent human capital complement. Therefore, ability-enhancing practices are ones that should help people perform in their jobs; these could include specially designed recruitment and selection practices designed to get employees with the requisite skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) who are also a good fit for the organizational culture (Chung & Pak, 2021). These could include training and development programs that are designed to enhance existing SKAs and keep them relevant for changing job conditions. This could also include practices that foster cross-training and building skills on the job, like job rotations and job shadowing.

When considering the recruitment and selection of blue-collar workers into local governments, scholars need to investigate whether working for the public sector has a particular appeal for these individuals. Does emphasizing government or public service values in job ads matter for recruiting blue-collar workers to government and what is the effect of this? Should the “publicness” of these jobs be highlighted in ads? Would this make a difference for recruiting employees? Results on these practices for knowledge workers in government have been mixed; experiments have not produced the desired results (see Linos, 2018) but studies on sector selection effects and emphasizing characteristics associated with the public sector have shown the importance of the public sector for some workers (see Holt, 2018; Keppeler & Papenuß, 2021).

Also, research is needed on what sets of SKAs are required for different blue-collar workers. As highlighted, there are many assumptions about the nature of blue-collar work and the routine aspect of core duties associated with many of these positions. How do blue-collar workers in government address stereotypes about the nature of their work (i.e., work that requires few skills, dirty work)? What are the coping strategies of the workers (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999, 2014)? What can managers and HR managers do to address possible stigma attached to these positions?

For those blue-collar workers who interact with the public or have the potential to interact with the public as part of the administration of their duties, scholars need to understand how they are trained in relation to public encounters and how discretion is managed—by the workers themselves and their managers. Which forms of training are the most effective? How do managers (line and HR managers) communicate with blue-collar workers about their interactions with the public? About the appropriate use of discretion? Effective communication strategies with the public? Customer service expectations? Training can be delivered in multiple ways—through formal training separate from the day-to-day work and through job shadowing and other on-the-job training mechanisms. For these blue-collar workers, research is needed on the training experiences of these workers and how this may shape how they view their positions as public employees and how they do their work.

Motivation-Enhancing Practices

Motivation-enhancing practices are those that inform employees how they are performing and reward them when this performance is strong. This can include rigorous and meaningful performance appraisals, performance management, pay-for-performance systems, and other forms of incentive pay (Meadows & Pike, 2010; Wright & Kehoe, 2008). This can also include promotion and advancement opportunities that give employees something to reach for as part of their overall work and job performance. In the public sector, it is also important to account for the particular motivation to serve the public (public service motivation [PSM])–both in terms of how PSM influences employee behaviors and the role of PSM in relation to motivation enhancing practices (Knies & Leisink, 2018; Luu, 2019; Mostafa et al., 2015). To what extent are blue-collar workers in government motivated by service to the public? What does public service in general and PSM specifically look like for blue-collar workers in government?

Scholars should investigate what motivates people to work in blue-collar positions in government. What is the best motivational mix of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for blue-collar workers in government? There have been arguments that blue-collar workers in government are driven more by the extrinsic rewards attached to the positions than the rewards of service (Gabris & Simo, 1995). However, being driven by instrumental motives does not mean that one does not also care about the public in public service. Desmarais and Gamassou (2014) found that blue-collar workers in government also demonstrated PSM. Studies of motivation and PSM in particular among these workers are limited—more research is needed to understand what it means to serve the public in a blue-collar position. What does meaningful work look like for blue-collar workers in government?

Does this service provide pride and a sense of meaningful work for these workers? If so, how and in what circumstances? Does this service conflict with performance expectations associated with the more routine aspects of their positions? Overall, a systematic understanding is needed how these individuals are managed, in terms of goals and performance expectations, how they are rewarded and what are meaningful rewards, and what motivates them.

Opportunity-Enhancing Practices

Finally, opportunity-enhancing practices are ones that vary the most in terms of what scholars include in these bundles of practices. These practices can be those that connect workers together to build social support and harness their collective energies, such as work teams and quality circles (Jiang et al., 2012; Obeidat et al., 2016; Wright & Kehoe, 2008). They can include empowerment activities, such as giving employees voice in particular decisions and sharing information on important decisions with employees to foster feelings of inclusion and engagement. Overall, the opportunity enhancing practices are focused on involving employees to build their confidence and autonomy in performing their jobs. Through these tools, employees are connected to their organization and learning and collaboration is encouraged among the employees (Jiang et al., 2012; Obeidat et al., 2016).

How would these practices work for blue-collar workers? What kinds of voice activities are available to blue-collar workers? One of the first areas to investigate is whether government workplaces create learning climates for these workers. Are they empowered to observe and feedback information they see in their positions into the overall direction and goals of the government? Or are their perspectives ignored based on assumptions or stereotypes associated with the nature of blue-collar work? There are assumptions that blue-collar work does not involve opportunities to exercise creativity (Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006). However, these workers are out and about in government and may see public services in a way that could bring new creative solutions to how local government operates if they were solicited. A bus driver routinely sees the same people on their route and could understand whether adjustments need to be made based on who regularly rides their bus. A worker in a public park could develop knowledge of what kind of citizens regularly use a park and whether that leads to any particular patterns of wear and tear on the park that could influence maintenance. These are but two examples, but there could be many ways in which real time information on local government could be captured and used by blue-collar workers for performance improvements.

In addition, the nature of social support between employees has been shown to influence numerous employee outcomes, including well-being and overall experience in one’s job (Jong, 2018; H. Kim & Stoner, 2008; Linos et al., 2022). How do blue-collar workers provide social support to each other? How do they receive and experience social support in the workplace? How does this support influence various employee outcomes (e.g., retention, satisfaction, engagement, well-being)? Research needs to explore how social support works among blue-collar government workers; one cannot assume similar intervention strategies or support techniques from office environments directly translate to these positions and their working environments. Finally, research on teams in public sector organizations is a research area where there has not been sufficient, sustained research attention (see Van der Hoek et al., 2018; Yang & Guy, 2011 for some examples of research on teams in government). How do teams work in blue-collar positions? Do teams provide opportunities for workers to use their voice to shape the work environment? Again, transferring team building and team management practices from white-collar positions to blue-collar positions may not effectively harness the power of this particular high-performance work practice.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this article, a number of questions have been raised on what it would mean to include blue-collar public workers in our research to build a truly inclusive HRM knowledge base. As being argued, there is a paucity of empirical research on these workers, so to answer these questions, scholars must be thoughtful about the research designs implemented. Probably, adjustments need to be made to these designs given the specific characteristics of blue-collar workers and their work conditions. However, these modifications need to be driven by the data, not stereotypes. For example, it has been argued that certain employment tests or other screening mechanisms may not be possible due to assumptions about literacy and reading skills in blue-collar workers (Carless et al., 2007) implying that changes in measurement instruments are required. If and to what degree current instruments are suited for blue-collar public workers is an empirical research question for future research.

Various ethnographic studies in the critical sociological literature have investigated how blue-collar workers deal with the negative stereotypes of their work (see McCabe & Hamilton, 2015; Thiel, 2007). These studies show how ethnographic methods—including participant observations, unstructured field interviews, and focus groups—provide rich qualitative data to identify relevant, contextual factors and the mechanisms through which they impact blue-collar public workers’ work and work outcomes. Hence, researchers should invest in ethnographic research methods to build an inclusive public HRM knowledge base and incorporate these workers without perpetuating assumptions not supported by data (Burawoy, 2003).

In recommending ethnographic methods, the cost or possible burden of this research on the participants are recognized. In terms of existing research, some studies provided evidence that people with fewer years of formal education are less willing to participate in research (Kelly et al., 2017) requiring special attention to recruit participants, while other studies showed the contrary (Pickery et al., 2001). Regardless of the enthusiasm of blue-collar workers to participate in research, researchers need to develop methods that minimize the respondents’ burden. For example, Kruyen (2020) developed DearScholar, a flexible smartphone app that enables respondents to conveniently participate in longitudinal (diary) research projects through devices that almost all individuals have access to in 2022.

Besides research that provides answers to the presented research questions, it is urged that scholars consider their role in enhancing blue-collar workers’ occupational prestige, which could impact their work and work outcomes (Christ et al., 2012; Freeland & Hoey, 2018). Blue-collar workers are commonly described with denigrating (derogatory) labels (e.g., “elementary,” “lower educated,” “low skilled,” and even “unskilled” work). While acknowledging that the term blue-collar workers might have negative connotations as well; moving forward, scholars should think of a new, neutral term to describe these workers. In a similar vein, researchers often focus on negative behavior and outcomes (e.g., unhealthy habits, occupational stress, tactics to cope with stereotypes), contributing to a negative image of blue-collar workers. Researchers are invited to investigate positive behavior and outcomes, like creativity (see Kruyen & Van Genugten, 2017), work engagement (see Bakker & Demerouti, 2008), organizational citizenship behavior (see Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997).

This article is intended to open a dialogue about what it means to build inclusive public sector workplaces from the perspective of occupational diversity through attention to blue-collar workers. Data on these workers need to be collected, especially at the local government level, as they are actively delivering public services to citizens and interacting with the public in a variety of ways. For many, working for government is an honor and a calling; one needs to check the assumption that this calling is not felt in blue-collar positions and study these workers. A truly inclusive government workforce captures and reflects the contributions of members from the top to the bottom of the occupational hierarchy and provides careful management to these members as valuable human resources. Only when blue-collar workers are included in research in public administration and ensure that HRM practices serve their needs will government live up to the promise of being a model employer. Hopefully, the questions put forward in this article inspire a new line of HRM research and new avenues for attracting people to public service.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ppm-10.1177_00910260231187540 – Supplemental material for Essential but Ignored: Including Blue-Collar Government Workers Into Human Resource Management Research

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ppm-10.1177_00910260231187540 for Essential but Ignored: Including Blue-Collar Government Workers Into Human Resource Management Research by Peter M. Kruyen and Jessica E. Sowa in Public Personnel Management

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Peter M. Kruyen

Jessica E. Sowa

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author Biographies

Peter M. Kruyen is an assistant professor. He investigates public servants’ behavior, psychological characteristics, and competencies, and the factors affecting their performance, well-being, and health. He develops and tests measurement (psychological) scales and software to solve medium and big (unstructured) data problems.

Jessica E. Sowa is a professor in the Biden School at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on HRM in government and nonprofit organizations. She is the editor-in-chief of the Review of Public Personnel Administration and the co-editor of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance.

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