Make Their Day Blog

In my little corner of Northern California, it’s common wisdom that “big box” stores represent soul-destroying corporate greed. Few people in our little community would readily admit to shopping in a Costco or a Walmart. They believe that only small locally-owned stores can possibly be good.

I have a different view about where to shop. I will shop anywhere that treats employees well. When employees are treated well they tend treat customers and even vendors well. The theory doesn’t always hold up, but it is pretty reliable.

In 2007 Circuit City chose to lay off their experienced workers for cheaper models. When I read the news I stopped shopping in Circuit City. I never stepped foot in one again. I drove 30 miles or bought online until Best Buy came to town. Best Buy has a reputation of treating employees much better than their now defunct counterpart, so that is where I now shop.

Walmart tends to need to be forced into being a good employer. I have never shopped in one.

Costco is a different story.  I do shop at Costco.The employees of our local Costco tend to stick around for years, some since the store opened in 1994.  From the beginning, I read that they had good benefits and decent pay. I could see that employees were helpful and courteous. The store had quality products, often from local sources. It was clean and well-stocked. I don’t care that they are a big chain. From my perspective, they are a good, local business.

Today I read an article in Fast Company (November 2009 - I’m a little behind) that just confirms my view. Employees at Costco receive an average of $17 per hour ($13 is the national average). Costco pays 90% of insurance costs for both full and part time employees (According to SHRM the average for retail is around 54%).

Costco still seems like a good place to work and I will still continue to shop there.

What do you think?

Watson Wyatt recently released a study regarding internal communication that held a big surprise for me. One of the areas of study was Goals of Communication Regarding the Economic Downturn. Easing stress, improving engagement, and managing change were the most frequent considerations. Retention, trust, and productivity rated lower as company communication goals, but by far the lowest rated goal was communicating the effect of the economy on benefits!

The study found that only 10 percent of employers worldwide were attempting to educate workers about the effect of the downturn on benefits. This figure breaks down as 9 percent U.S., 8 percent Europe, 4 percent Canada,  0 percent Australia, and 23 percent Middle East!

I am completed baffled. How do employers expect to reduce stress, while improving retention and trust if employees don’t understand the rationale behind changes to their benefits? What is the thinking behind this lack of communication?

Connect the dots and you can manage expectations and maintain trust and morale. Reduce benefits without a complete explanation and you destroy trust and morale. Seems pretty obvious, so why isn’t the necessary communication happening?

Do you have insights on this? I would like to hear from you.

A recent CareerBuilderSurvey found that while companies are cutting down on perks, benefits, travel and incentives, employee recognition is actually up!

It seems that the benefits of sound recognition programs are understood in most organizations. They know that the returns of good recognition far outweigh the costs.

Want to reap some of those returns? Forget about expensive appreciation events and awards for now. Focus on recognition between individuals.

Manager-driven programs produce the best results so teach managers how to build meaningful recognition into their overburdened schedules without causing additional hardship.

Second to manager-driven recognition is peer-driven recognition. Set up simple peer awards with little or no monetary component so that they don’t require a lot of oversight.

Create programs that drive your most important business initiatives. This helps morale and produces the results you really need right now.

Have some ideas you would like to share? I want to hear them!