Business practices and concepts come and go. But many new business ideas that are introduced through the business press, consulting firms, etc. really aren’t new at all. They’re just new to the latest generation of business managers. An article in the New York Times caught my eye the other day. It was déjà vu all over again.
It was a report about a seismic change taking place at Walmart. The short story is this: Faced with declining same store sales, declining customer satisfaction scores, and increasing employee disenfranchisement, management decided to embark on a bold experiment in early 2015 –- pay their employees more. In fact, pay them at market rate. Early results are promising, as Walmart is now seeing gains in productivity, same store sales and customer satisfaction.