If you want a glimpse of the post-recession American workplace, stop in at any Anderen Bank branch in Orlando.
Tellers, customer-service representatives and new account salespeople aren’t chained to their stations. Tellers frequently hop out to help a customer open an account or reconcile a statement. New account and customer-service representatives dash behind windows when the teller line lengthens.
The free-flowing system allowed Anderen to eliminate six full-time positions when loan volumes plummeted in the recession, staffing each branch with just four front-line employees. Loans and deposits rebounded some in 2010, but Anderen has no plans to return to its old ways even if business surges.
Noting that the new system helped the 3-year-old bank turn its first profit last year, bank President John Warren says, “I believe this is the new normal, and we will keep this structure.”
One reason U.S. employers are hiring slowly — and unemployment is at 9 percent more than 18 months into the recovery — is that Anderen’s increased productivity is commonplace across the USA. Services firms and manufacturers alike cut their staffs sharply in the recession as sales plunged, and they found ways to do more with fewer workers.
Productivity is the economy’s output per labor hour. It typically falls sharply early in recessions as companies hold on to workers even as output falls on the belief they’ll need them in the upswing. But in the recent downturn and the 2001 slump, employers slashed in anticipation of falling sales and then kept cutting, wringing more from each employee and boosting profits even as sales grew modestly.
Productivity has risen more in this recovery than previous ones, except for 2001, jumping 3.5 percent in 2009 and 3.6 percent last year. A growing economy generally means more jobs, and the USA’s average 3 percent growth the past six quarters should have…