Preview: ‘Undercover Boss’

So the Big Boss is about to get a taste of the grungiest of the low-level jobs at his behemoth corporation, which includes cleaning overflowing portable toilets, sorting recyclables on a speeding conveyor belt and picking up roadside trash in gale-force winds.

Insert maniacal laughter here from every Joe Lunchbucket who’s ever punched a time clock. “Undercover Boss,” launching Feb. 7 on CBS in the plum post- Super Bowl spot, traffics in humiliation only to a small degree and strictly for edu-tainment value.

There’s a reason the chief executive officers in the unscripted show are doing grunt work and looking fairly inept at it: They’re walking a mile in their employees’ shoes, looking for systemic problems to fix and finding unsung heroes to herald. How’s that for a feel-good show for our recession-wracked time?

“Undercover Boss” was an easy sell, said CBS’ entertainment president, Nina Tassler, because the network’s core audience traditionally responds to stories of redemption. That sentiment came across in an especially powerful clip she said. “Within five minutes, I was sobbing,” Tassler said. “I had an immediate, visceral reaction. It really grabbed me emotionally.”

In each of 10 episodes, “Undercover Boss” will follow a different honcho of a major company as he or she goes through training for various jobs, some of them involving gritty, backbreaking manual labor. The camera crew that shadows the incognito CEO is explained as a tool for documenting job tryouts, so existing workers know they’re being filmed.

Along the way, the CEO is paired with employees who have legitimate bones to pick or can shed light on procedural ills. The bosses are on a dual mission: to get a front-line look at their company to see how things can be done better and to find workers who deserve recognition, which Tassler said put the series “directly in the zeitgeist” by glorifying the little guy.

The show’s creative team views the program as a “formatted documentary” instead of a garden-variety reality series because it has a definite formula and special set of requirements.

The boss, for instance, has to be unrecognizable to the rank and file and willing to give a week’s worth of his or her time to head into the trenches to try a handful of entry-level jobs. He or she also must want to make changes that will improve the workers’ lives while allowing them to complain about the problems.

The first episode centers on Larry O’Donnell, president and chief operating officer of Houston-based Waste Management Inc., who was so lame at gathering trash that his supervisor fired him. He did slightly better at cleaning outhouses and manning an assembly line. O’Donnell made a number of changes after his experience, ranging from giving raises for handling multiple jobs to making the company more female-friendly.

Other bigwigs to be profiled run well-known companies like 7-Eleven, White Castle, Hooters and Churchill Downs. The corporations didn’t pay to be featured, and they weren’t asked to buy advertising on the network as part of their starring role.

Stephen Lambert, an executive producer for the show, said he “lost count” at how many companies turned him down for a warts-and-all look at their inner workings. Though it’s certainly not without its risk, there’s a tremendous upside to this kind of product placement, say experts in branded entertainment.

“It’ll be refreshing for consumers to get that kind of transparency,” said Stuart McLean, a branded entertainment veteran and CEO of Content & Co., who’s not connected to “Undercover Boss.” “It shows that the brands aren’t too precious to do this, and the CEOs aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.”

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