Best of CASE District V Award
 

Institution: University of Chicago

Title of entry: A Great Place to Work

About this entry: On March 21, 2020, Jim Fish, ’98, the president and CEO of WM (then Waste Management), was in his Houston home. As the COVID-19 pandemic surged, the United States was under a state of national emergency, and there were already nearly 24,000 coronavirus cases and 302 deaths from it in the country alone. Fish watched the news unfold on TV, alongside millions of other petrified American. “CNN was in New York, and they were talking about how there were people dying on the floor of the hospital because they didn’t have enough rooms,” Fish remembers.

It was after midnight, and his wife and two daughters had already gone to bed. Fish watched alone, and he was truly scared. But if he was scared, he couldn’t imagine how terrified the more than 50,000 workers under his employ were, many of whom live and work in the New York tristate area, which was a COVID-19 epicenter.

“What about our drivers, our recycle workers, and our customer-experience agents all sitting there watching the same broadcast?” he thought. “They have to be going, ‘Holy cow, I’m going to be out of a job on Monday morning.’” This couldn’t wait. Fish called a company-wide, emergency, Sunday morning meeting with only one task on the agenda: eliminate this concern.

In this feature story, writer Blair R. Fischer explores how Booth alumnus Fish helped his company and employees navigate the pandemic, and the personal story behind his day-to-day efforts to create a concretely people-first workplace.