Friday, August 05, 2011

I am Your Life Blood Revisted: Two sides of the Coin

The other day I posted a blog post entitled Hey, I am Your Life Blood.One of the readers sent me a comment back with this reply:

I recently read an interesting piece on a management decision at Starbucks. The CEO started a program to raise store revenues by $100,000 a year, He pushed for a solution that recognized the value of employees which turned on paying their baristas and managers more than the going rate in the food service industry. This policy recognized the value of those well-trained people who served as the direct conduit to the customer. What a smart idea it turned out to be as in store revenues increased by an average of $150,000 a year

So it got me wondering what the other side of the spectrum might look like. A member of the DBAI Advisory Board turned me on to the other side of the coin. It seems that a franchisee of Pizza Hut is embroiled in a national class action suit because they said under state law the pizza delivery men and women should be paid as tip workers and the fact that they drove their cars for work did not change the requirements. So they were not paid the required $.51 per mile for their driving time thus bringing their take home pay under the minimum wage level of $2.13 per hour. What makes this issue worse is that in 2004 the issue arose with the same circumstances and resulted in that franchisee being fined $5,100,000.

I realize that we are in tough economic times but if one food retail establishment makes some changes and receives a huge uptick in revenue and another one faces a dire fine, why would you make the decision not too treat your employees with respect and recognition of their value? Let's keep the dialogue going.

Posted via email from hrstrategist@Net-Speed

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