Pay your employees more
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
In any case, I know this doesn't count as data but there is a growing number of establishments (retail stores, coffee shops, etc) I just don't go to anymore because I know the lines are going to be overly long due to understaffing.
It is not okay to make customers wait 10+ minutes in line so you can save a handful of multiples of 8 bucks an hour. And if you do this you may well save a tiny bit of money in the short term, but eventually the customers will just go elsewhere and those customers are unlikely to come back for a long time even after you fix the problem.
(tl;dr -- FU, Vons stores in San Diego).
ps. I realize having to wait 10-ish minutes in line for fresh produce and other groceries is the epitome of a first world problem, but I still reserve the right to point it out as a failing business strategy.
Even in these normally 'off' times, they'll have around 80% capacity, often workers for the cable companies, etc. who want to be in and out fast but get good food. And they are. I've been in on those off times and you can get your food in under 5 minutes because they're prepping everything. Even better, when you tell them you're done, they're back with the bill in under a minute.
I've never gotten service like that at a chain-restaurant, because even in their off-times they've barely got any staff. You wait longer for your food, you wait longer for you bills and god forbid you want a refill on your drink, because they'll never pass you at this time of day.
We're now living in a world where a lot of jobs are being automated away, and we don't need as many people in employment as we did, say, 30 years ago.
Having automated away menial and administrative tasks, smart companies are now spending some of their vast profits on employees who are nice to have, rather than absolutely necessary for the running of the business. A few extra shop workers to save people waiting in line, a few extra people at the end of the phone.
I'd much rather live in that world, than the alternative, which is a few people having jobs and the rest in the dole queue.
Less pedantically: the focus was on more, better trained employees, and more experienced employees. In the later two situations, this generally translates to individuals being better paid -- experienced workers demand higher wages, as to better trained ones. Further, a large number of the faiure examples given were about firing the higher cost employees (experienced, trained ones, and full-time ones) in favor of cheaper ones, again implying that the per-employee wages were dropped as well.
All else equal a company should pay its employees a salary which helps them live a meaningful life. But the article doesn't support the title in any way.
Take best buy for example. Does paying their employees more save them from bankruptcy? Of course not.
A smartly run business is probably better equipped to get incremental revenue out of more people/investment.
However, it's just a specific example of following the classic talent-based management formula:
* Hire good people,
* Give them goals and the resources they need, and
* Get the hell out of their way.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688198
Centrally planned governments don't have a monopoly on stupidity.
If your product is in high demand and you have incredible mind share (as the mentioned brands do), revenue will follow. With more revenue you can afford to ramp up your customer service.
This article seems to claim that revenue is directly correlated to payroll costs. So spending more on payroll will somehow magically increase revenue? Then everyone would be doing it. There is a delicate balance.
Lastly, Circuit City failed because they couldn't innovate as fast as other competitors, namely Best Buy, not because they tried, as a last ditch effort, to save money by hiring temp workers.
Hmmm. Lehman's CEO was not exactly underpaid. Nor Freddie Mac. Nor Fannie Mae. Nor GM. Nor Enron. Nor Worldcom. Nor Rich McGinn in his Lucent days.
And that's just the first people that spring to mind in 60 seconds.
Another way of looking: those places all got exactly what they paid for: someone good at manipulating a given set of rules and following strategies to the T, and who brings a fancy name to the table. Too bad they didn't also focus on the "changes behavior when the rules and the strategy don't make sense" too.
However each and every thing has its own price vs quality graph. If I am buying apples, a ten dollar apple is not likely to be ten times better than a one dollar apple.