案例研究：创造好工作、高利润的4个步骤

    在所有围绕最低工资的愤怒和声讨之中，以及没有前途的低收入工作激增的情况下，没有人质疑一个关键的假设：增加对劳动力的投资需要消费者或股东掏腰包。

    不过，几乎没人质疑不等于完全没人。麻省理工学院（MIT）斯隆商学院（Sloan School of Management）教授商业运营课程的泽伊内普•汤恩是个例外。她花费了十年的时间到美国各地调研零售业工人和他们的上级，详细研究了沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)、好市多（Costco）、 Trader Joe's和QuikTrip等零售企业，以及UPS、、丰田（Toyota）和西南航空（Southwest Airlines）等公司的日常运营细节。

    调研成果即将出版在《优异的劳资策略：聪明的公司如何投资员工，降低成本，提高利润》（The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits）一书中，完全颠覆了传统观念。唐恩做了令人信服的调查，提高薪资和福利（并给员工更清晰的职业发展目标），获得更高的客户满意度（包括更具竞争力的价格和出众的服务）以及更丰厚的股东回报。

    如果建立在纯理论的基础之上，这些论证或许远没有这么令人信服，但这本书中阐述的四步策略直接取自数年来默默执行的几家公司。

    看看好市多。唐恩写到，这家公司的平均薪资为每小时20.89美元，比最接近的竞争对手、沃尔玛的山姆会员店（Sam's Club）高出40%。好市多向所有每周工作超过20个小时的员工提供福利。员工能看到升职的机会，因为98%的门店经理和很多好市多高管都是从仓库管理或收银员做起的。

    这家公司的招聘很受欢迎。2005年，好市多在密歇根州Green Oak Township新开店（那时距离经济衰退造成失业率激增还很遥远）时，5,000人应聘它的160个岗位。服务满一年及以上员工的流失率为5.5%，仅为零售行业平均水平的四分之一。唐恩指出，维持低成本有很多办法，好好对待员工就是其中一个。

    因此，这种做法既利于员工，也利于消费者和股东吗？显然如此。《消费者报告》（Consumer Reports）将好市多列入美国消费者满意度前五的零售商。而且，这家公司还是一棵摇钱树：唐恩计算显示，好市多单位平方英尺销售额比山姆会员店高近70%，单位员工销售额高出近一倍。好市多库存流转率也是零售商平均值的两倍。投资者也得到了好处：好市多股价自2003年中至今已大涨了5倍，而沃尔玛同期仅上涨了40%。

    好市多和唐恩研究的其他几家提供好工作、但不牺牲低价或高回报的公司一样，主要通过4种方式取得显而易见的魅力。《优秀劳资策略》详细地描述了每一步，其中第一步就是为顾客提供更少、但更好的选择。（看看西南航空，它们的航班不提供不必要的服务、只运营有限的航线、同时培养了同心协力的员工；或者再看看Trader Joe's，它出售的商品比大多数超市都少，但它却把这个特点转变成了竞争优势，部分原因是每位员工都成了商店存货方面的专家。）

    接下来的一步是在常规流程中严格遵守标准，在其他事情上让员工们充分运用自己的判断力。第三步，提倡员工互相培训，从而使得每个人都能在需要时做其他人的工作。第四步，唐恩运用好市多和其他公司的一些小型案例研究显示，在员工配备上允许一定程度的冗余，甚至有时超编，可以最大程度地利用员工的时间，借此削减成本。

    唐恩警告称，这四步中没有一步能够不依赖其他三个独立发挥作用。她写到：“它是一揽子方案。”她还很清楚地意识到，采用这种策略的所有四步意味着将全面改变现有做法，但她相信这是值得的——而且不仅仅只对临时工有效。

    “当前的低成本零售业务运营方式——或者，我称为坏工作的策略，对于管理层而言都很有压力，”唐恩写到。“它会陷入一个无休止的怪圈，永远追求尽可能地保持低劳工成本，以及应对所有因此产生的运营和服务难题。”她认为，提供更佳工作的地方不仅仅是零售商的事。“如果好工作策略在低成本零售行业能行得通，”她写道。“那么，它可能基本上在其他领域都可行。”（财富中文网）

    In all the sound and fury over the minimum wage, and the current boom in low-paying, dead-end jobs, nobody is questioning a crucial assumption: More investment in labor would have to come out of consumers' and shareholders' pockets.

    Make that almost nobody. Zeynep Ton, who teaches business operations at MIT's Sloan School of Management, spent 10 years traveling the U.S. talking with workers and their supervisors in retail. She scrutinized the day-to-day details of how things get done (or don't) in the trenches at retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT), Costco (COST), Trader Joe's, and QuikTrip, and inside other employers including UPS (UPS), Toyota (TM), and Southwest Airlines (LUV).

    The result is a forthcoming book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits, that stands the conventional wisdom on its head. Ton makes a convincing case that better pay and benefits -- and giving workers a clear shot at career advancement -- yield higher customer satisfaction (including competitive prices and stellar service) and fatter shareholder returns.

    This argument would be far less persuasive if it were built on mere theory, but the four-part strategy laid out in the book is drawn straight from what a few companies have quietly been doing for years.

    Consider Costco. Ton writes that average pay for workers at the company is $20.89 an hour, more than 40% higher than pay at its closest competitor, Sam's Club (owned by Wal-Mart). Costco offers benefits to all employees who work more than 20 hours a week. Workers also see the chance to move up, since 98% of store managers, and many Costco executives, started out as stock clerks or cashiers.

    Jobs at the company are so coveted that, when Costco opened a new store in Green Oak Township, Mich. in 2005 (well before the recession sent unemployment soaring), 5,000 people applied for 160 openings. Among employees who have been with the company for a year or more, turnover is 5.5%, about a quarter of the average for the retail industry -- just one way among many, Ton notes, that treating workers well can help keep costs low.

    So is what's good for workers also good for consumers and shareholders? Evidently, yes.Consumer Reports ranks Costco among the top five retailers nationwide in customer satisfaction. And the company mints money: Ton calculates that its sales per square foot are almost 70% higher than Sam's Club, and sales per employee nearly double. Costco also turns its inventory at twice the rate of the average variety retailer. Investors reap the benefits: Costco stock has gone up sixfold since mid-2003, vs. a gain of 40% for Wal-Mart shares over the same period.

    Along with several other companies Ton studied that are creating good jobs without sacrificing low prices or high returns, Costco achieves this apparent magic in four ways, and The Good Jobs Strategy describes each step in detail, starting with offering customers fewer, but better, choices. (Think Southwest Airlines, with its no-frills flights, limited routes, and gung-ho employees; or Trader Joe's, which carries fewer items than most supermarkets but has turned that into a competitive advantage, in part because every employee is an expert on what the stores do stock.)

    Next comes a rigid adherence to standardization in routine processes, while letting employees use their own judgment about everything else. Third, the strategy calls for cross-training employees so they can do each other's jobs when needed. Fourth, Ton uses specific mini-case studies from inside Costco and other companies to show how building some slack into staffing, even erring on the side of overstaffing at times, can cut costs by making the most efficient use of workers' time.

    Ton cautions that none of these four measures will work well without the others. "It's a package deal," she writes. She's also well aware that, at many companies, adopting all four parts of the strategy would mean a total overhaul of current practices, but she believes that would be worth the effort -- and not just for hourly workers.

    "The current practice of low-cost retail -- or what I call the bad-jobs strategy -- is stressful for management," Ton writes. "It fosters an endless trench-warfare mentality of keeping labor costs as low as possible while dealing with all the operational and service problems created by doing that." Nor is offering better jobs only for retailers, in her view. "If the good-jobs strategy is possible in low-cost retail," she writes, "then it is possible pretty much anywhere."