>You know, I really wonder how I seem to stay profitable and >have zero employee turnover. I really ought to get into a line >of work that doesn't really need all these highly skilled career >professionals that I'm competing for.
A couple of years ago I listened to an interview with the president of BJ's on this topic. They are in a similar business to Sam's/WalMart, but have a very different business model in regards to their employees. BJ's managers concluded that paying better wages and taking better care of employees would more than pay for itself in higher productivity from lower turnover. He sounded very much like you, wondering about Sam's/WalMart very different decision. We see decisions like this all the time in business. Circuit City fired all their experienced staff a little over a year ago. I opined here that this would lead to their downfall. It did. Some managers even think that saving a few $100 on cheap PCs instead of getting highly-productive Macs is good management. Hard to believe, but true. It does seem to work for WalMart. To understand why you need to look more broadly. WalMart is profiting from loopholes in the system. They aggressively shift costs to the government and local communities. It is sort of like the economic equivalent of pollution. The reason pollution pays is that the polluter is not made to pay the full cost of their actions. The community pays. The polluter profits. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
