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Gosh, what an idea. One question, though... do the 13 years we paid our field staff of around 100 such high wages, with readily accessible benefits, that owners of competing firms would corner my wife at events and beg her to stop screwing up their hiring process... does that count? When every dollar in staff costs came directly from our own profit levels? (We did just fine... while sending six kids to college and building quite a portfolio. Never had the need to screw any of our people to do it.)
Next question?
Yes, what kind of field staff? Were your competitors paying minimum wage and no benefits?
Yes, what kind of field staff? Were your competitors paying minimum wage and no benefits?
In-home educational services with highly-trained staff. I don't remember any specifics that would make sense without a lot of context, but in any typical year we paid 25-50% better than the three or four significant competitors. We paid more at a starting rate, we paid for training (minimum of two weeks, not counting further 'doubled' time for skill development), we had pretty much all the hours any workers wanted, we offered full benefits at 24-32 hours, and gladly worked around school schedules for staff that were or wanted to pursue a degree in the field. Raises were fast and generous for the best, and even the adequate. (The slackers didn't last long and went to competitors where they belonged.)
Over 13 years, I would guess we had around 400 employees, most who started as young women with no real direction or career goal, turned most of them into trained and certified therapists, evolved two or three dozen into senior staff roles with advanced degrees, and saw a huge percentage go (back) to college because of their engagement. They were mercilessly headhunted by the other firms but often came back to tell us stories with a laugh about the pay, benefits and overall commitment of the company to the clients.
(One of those competitors was run by a longtime friend of mine, who I knew outside this field and respected... until he just sold his name and PhD to an economic predator and rubberstamped not only terrible services, but fast-food level employer standards. We kind of stopped being friends.)
Pretty much everything over about 1.5x minimum wage was voluntary on our part (mostly my wife's); we could have maintained an adequate staff level of more or less adequately skilled workers at... maybe half our average payroll cost. And had far less accommodating policies about hours, school, training etc.
This policy put us well into the 1%, by the way - from a rather scratchy start involving all the pooled funds we had at marriage, maybe $20k in all.
About five years in, we had a discussion about how we'd done it that far, and couldn't imagine having done it any other way. We were deeply hated by the competition, who wanted cheap staff to run expensive programs at maximum profit and had to (gasp!) give raises and initiate benefits to keep their best staff. They often didn't.
So if your point was that I was pulling all of this out of my ass as someone who had never had to make a payroll in his life and was just parroting socialista lib'ral whining, you lose. And I have no respect - zero, nada, el chifre, bupkis - no respect for any company that can't take decent care of its employees. If they can only survive by being merciless about minimal pay and benefits and punitive employment terms, then IMHO they can go die in Wall Street's gutter. On a cold night, with a broken leg. As so many arrogant, self-important types announce here, if I could do it, so can they... they must just be too lazy, greedy and entitled to pull it off.
In-home educational services with highly-trained staff. I don't remember any specifics that would make sense without a lot of context, but in any typical year we paid 25-50% better than the three or four significant competitors. We paid more at a starting rate, we paid for training (minimum of two weeks, not counting further 'doubled' time for skill development), we had pretty much all the hours any workers wanted, we offered full benefits at 24-32 hours, and gladly worked around school schedules for staff that were or wanted to pursue a degree in the field. Raises were fast and generous for the best, and even the adequate. (The slackers didn't last long and went to competitors where they belonged.)
Over 13 years, I would guess we had around 400 employees, most who started as young women with no real direction or career goal, turned most of them into trained and certified therapists, evolved two or three dozen into senior staff roles with advanced degrees, and saw a huge percentage go (back) to college because of their engagement. They were mercilessly headhunted by the other firms but often came back to tell us stories with a laugh about the pay, benefits and overall commitment of the company to the clients.
(One of those competitors was run by a longtime friend of mine, who I knew outside this field and respected... until he just sold his name and PhD to an economic predator and rubberstamped not only terrible services, but fast-food level employer standards. We kind of stopped being friends.)
Pretty much everything over about 1.5x minimum wage was voluntary on our part (mostly my wife's); we could have maintained an adequate staff level of more or less adequately skilled workers at... maybe half our average payroll cost. And had far less accommodating policies about hours, school, training etc.
This policy put us well into the 1%, by the way - from a rather scratchy start involving all the pooled funds we had at marriage, maybe $20k in all.
About five years in, we had a discussion about how we'd done it that far, and couldn't imagine having done it any other way. We were deeply hated by the competition, who wanted cheap staff to run expensive programs at maximum profit and had to (gasp!) give raises and initiate benefits to keep their best staff. They often didn't.
So if your point was that I was pulling all of this out of my ass as someone who had never had to make a payroll in his life and was just parroting socialista lib'ral whining, you lose. And I have no respect - zero, nada, el chifre, bupkis - no respect for any company that can't take decent care of its employees. If they can only survive by being merciless about minimal pay and benefits and punitive employment terms, then IMHO they can go die in Wall Street's gutter. On a cold night, with a broken leg. As so many arrogant, self-important types announce here, if I could do it, so can they... they must just be too lazy, greedy and entitled to pull it off.
No, I don’t subscribe to the idea you need to make payroll to understand business. My point was your business seems like training actually mattered and people had a skill set for the job market. Doing more might actually give your company short and long term benefits. You just had a different business model, but one I’m sure you could also see clear benefits from compared to your competitors. That could have ended in more profit not less for those 6 educations and all of your other financial success.
That’s not really the labor pool Walmart is largely working with. They could pour money into the staff and see nothing from it. Many of these people just want “a” job and move on. They don’t care about developing skill or doing anything but collecting a paycheck. Sometimes you don’t have willing “participants”.
That’s not really the labor pool Walmart is largely working with. They could pour money into the staff and see nothing from it. Many of these people just want “a†job and move on. They don’t care about developing skill or doing anything but collecting a paycheck. Sometimes you don’t have willing “participantsâ€.
Correct. These type of job are staffed with 2 groups; college kids who need some money to date, go out, while developing truly marketable skills who will progress to far better jobs/occupations, , plus people who never developed anything above minimal skills, earning minimal pay, who will be at McJobs for most of their working life.
Yes, there are so many problems when you hire those damned... people.
Especially at the lowest possible cost. They end up stealing because their shift times don't leave enough time to get across town on the bus for their food stamps.
Nonsense.
Thieves steal because they are dishonest people w/o character.
That’s not really the labor pool Walmart is largely working with.
Define chicken and egg here, in small words.
There are many equivalent businesses that do better for relatively modest additional payroll costs. Walmart has prized its inherent - to the DNA - cheapness for decades, such as their famously dingy, dirty, battered HQ in Kansas or wherever.
I simply do not believe any business has to short-change its workforce to survive. I am not speaking from some vague academic position or ivory tower or well-worn stool at Starbucks, but from long, hard experience as every kind of employee and several kinds of employer - and as taxpayer, one-time struggling parent, longer time very financially comfortable percenter and a sense of personal and civic ethics forged thereby.
All arguments that employees are only worth what minimum an employer can pay, and are entitled only to the hourly rate they can justify, and that it's entirely good business to succeed and profit on the backs of employees... are [insert several biological waste terms C-D won't let me use].
Those who defend such a practice based on the twin pillars of FYJIGM and "only unworthy people fail" can eat said waste; here's a spoon.
Thieves steal because they are dishonest people w/o character.
The vast majority of employees btw Do NOT Steal.
Well, make up your mind. I'm not sure what net point you're trying to make.
WM is infamously cheap in pay and working conditions and thus only attracts a bottom tier of employee - who may be complete, addled losers no one else will hire or desperate people taking the only jobs available since WM pushed all other business out of a town or area. They then treat those employees slightly worse than cattle. I am unsurprised that employee shrinkage is a problem for them. I don't condone theft of any kind, but it's a problem within their power to fix. They could reduce shrinkage to industry norms or less by simply spending that money on the employees in the first place.
while paying more than median retail wage plus insuring 50% in an industry that insures 40%.
BTW they make under 4% EBITDA.
Walmart's behavior across decades, including displacing hundreds or thousands of viable businesses and employment opportunities without the slightest care or return to the disturbed local economy, puts them beyond any trival economic comparisons. How much of that "paying more" came about in the last decade or less, as they were forced to? Pretty sure it doesn't hold up any further back. Not to mention the juggling of work schedules to prevent eligibility for benefits, on the largest possible scale.
Quote:
Was your business obtaining more or less than a 4% EBITDA?
Not a clue. The gross was around 10%. That retail and grocery are very low margin industries is not exactly news, but many stores and chains manage to thrive in it while not screwing their workers mercilessly so the each member of the owning family can make more per hour than any one of their employees make per year. (That's around a 9000:1 ratio, by the way.)
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