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BOOKEND
The more the merrier
Everyone knows it. The high street is in big
trouble. The threat from e-tailers has driven many
bricks-and-mortar shops to cut staff and training
overheads and to invest in automation, in a bid to
stay competitive.
Yet, according to research from Marshall Fisher,
Santiago Gallino and Sergei Netessine from the
University of Wharton School of Business, that’s not
always wise. In fact, it can eliminate the single major
advantage that physical retailers have over their digital
brethren: knowledgeable and helpful employees to
whom customers can actually talk face to face.
In a controlled test, they found that increasing
headcount in stores by 10% led to 5.1% growth in
revenues and a 6% growth in operating profits. In
another test, they found that employees who engaged
in training saw their sales performance rise by 46%
compared with those who didn’t. Of course, this
doesn’t imply that it’s time to flood stores with a cast
of thousands of unnecessary workers.
The solution is to optimise the number of staff,
not simply to cut to the bone. One practical and
cost-effective way of finding out what that optimal
number is for larger stores, is to examine historical data
on absenteeism to estimate the effect of staff numbers
on sales. That may well lead to more investment in
people, rather than less.
Talkin’ about my generation
It’s impossible to avoid hearing how millennials are changing
society. But how are they changing the workplace? McKinsey
predicts that, by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be made up of
millennials. So we’d better get it right. Tamsin Kendrick, consulting
director at the Observer Effect (and a card-carrying millennial),
gives her views.
Is it true that millennials are actually hard to manage?
I definitely hear the rumours: that millennials are narcissistic, that
they expect to be promoted faster, paid more, treated better and
are unwilling to do the “grunt work”. But, let’s remember they
do have it tough. Since 2008, prices have gone up faster than
wages – they are working harder than their parents and for less.
They know they need to get what they can – and now. Because
who knows where they might be in a few years? Managers need
to show them the value of the skills they’re learning, not just in
their current job, but for their whole career. If a millennial asks
for a promotion after two months, the proper response is not to
shake them but to ask them where they want to be in two years,
and plan their pathway together.
How could you simply improve most workplace cultures?
Installing a table football or offering kale smoothies isn’t the right
approach. Most millennials just want to live and work in a way that
suits them. That means they want to work when and how they
choose and technology allows for that. What some describe as
entitlement is really just a result of empowerment. Why can’t you
go to yoga a bit early, if you can work on your phone or laptop
afterwards and achieve the same results (or better)? L&D is
also key. Clear training, mentoring or secondment opportunities
are crucial.
Do businesses need to have a purpose?
Millennials don’t need to be sold to. But if you’re going to have a
purpose, make sure it feels congruent and ties in with what you’re
asking your team to do in the day to day. It doesn’t have to be all
about saving the world, but millenials do want to feel that they
are part of something; that they’re contributing to something
greater than just making other people money. It’s a sentiment
that, I suspect, isn’t shared just by millennials, but by most humans.
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Future Talent