DoorDash overhauls worker pay, incentives after internal survey

Dive Brief:

DoorDash, the San Francisco-based food delivery service, said it will provide a breakdown of earnings for each delivery and roll out new incentives after getting feedback from its drivers. Doordash said it held roundtable discussions with "Dashers" in March in Chicago, Austin and San Francisco and provided online surveys that asked drivers to prioritize the improvements they'd most like to see. Thousands of drivers provided feedback on everything from the pay model to restaurant wait times, the company said.
Workers' top priorities as revealed by the survey included making pay more transparent to drivers (15.96%), making deliveries more worth the driver's while (15.43%), not offering deliveries out of a driver's zone (8.56%), improving customer support for drivers (7.51%), offering new incentives (7.29%), reducing wait time between orders (7.19%), decreasing wait time at merchants (4.76%), improving the app so that it has fewer crashes (4.65%), making peak pay easier to achieve (4.44%) and providing more batched deliveries (3.7%).
The company said it will undertake more changes based on drivers' input, including providing better earnings for long-distance deliveries, more deliveries closer to drivers' locations and better incentives. It will also create a Dasher Community Council with representation from drivers around the country and give its drivers no-cost occupational accident insurance.

Dive Insight:

A tight job market and new generations of employees with new demands in the workplace, such as student loan payment benefits and flexible work schedules, have caused some employers to prioritize listening to their employees in 2019.

Many employers have figured out that regular listening programs can lead to high engagement levels, Jim Barnett, CEO, Glint, previously told HR Dive in an interview. But, he said, "the annual survey is dead," and short pulse surveys allow employers to get more immediate feedback. Surveys can help HR to get in tune with the varying needs of different generations in the workplace, experts have suggested. For example, recent college grads may want different offerings from employers than workers who are close to retirement or those about to enter the middle range of their tenure in the workplace.

Listening to employees could be key to worker engagement and retention. "[A] strong focus on listening to employees, workforce health and well-being, job redesign, and an enterprise-wide analysis of all dimensions of employee engagement" are all factors in creating a "simply irresistible" organization, Deloitte previously said.

Some companies have opted to develop a Chief Listening Officer, a role aimed at monitoring internal and external communication channels to gather information and share insights about the organization, according to Annie Shapiro, Namely's Director of Content & Communications. When employers listen to workers and make changes accordingly, they might see gains in engagement, productivity and retention.