I know it sounds awful, people having to take a pay cut, but in this story, the reason he did it was both noble and smart. In the article I read, he did it so that he could keep paying his employees their minimum wage of $70,000. The moral of this story is – Value your employees more than you value your excesses. As I read this article, it brought to mind a number of companies where this is true. Most business owners may value their employees, but only so much as stops at wages. How many business owners have you seen driving Range Rovers and Teslas, but their employees’ cars look like the wheels will fall off if they will even start. Remember that it is employees that do most of the work at a company. If that is not true, and the owner does most of the work – first, take some management training and second, then find some new employees. Training new employees is a large expense for companies, whether sending them to outside training programs or in the time expended in showing them how to do their jobs and teaching them required skills. An owner is STUPID to continue to ride the ‘train – retrain – quit – hire – train – retrain - etc. carousel any longer. Shackle the key employees to the company via comp. Profitable business does not mean loads of money in an owners’ pockets and toys and no long term employees.
There is a concept that most of us were taught growing up – and is called sharing. Sharing can easily be transformed to feasible and fair compensation plans. There are successful models available on the web, so I am not going to try to get into all options available here. Plans can be profit based, revenue based, or even expense reduction based, and since all are included in a business operation, can incorporate some of each. But the owner can ask her/himself a question – are you only a terrible manager or just plain greedy? One can teach management but can you unlearn greed, particularly at a late age?
The pandemic has caused many labor problems that has been a severe strain on businesses in this country and others. Solving the pandemic remains priority # 1 in my eyes. COVID has caused the lack of adequate and available labor, and the excessive unemployment compensation plans available from government need to be transformed to the employment incentive variety for people gaining employment. Provide a financial incentive for people that become employed and stay employed for an adequate period of time. It is becoming quite tedious to hear owners barking about the lack of any available employees. And, owners, look yourself in the mirror and ask if it is the lack of available people or the unwillingness of employees to contribute to your greed and monuments to self? The economy is a continual balancing act, as most of us know, but the greed has become intolerable. We all need to work together in business to find new ways to be successful and profitable.
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