Anyone in the C-suites paying attention to something other than social issues and planning for the next Week of Understanding event? In case you haven’t noticed, we are struggling out here in stores, you left us with leaders that lack empathy and the courage to push back against poorly conceived and implemented strategies or worse, they come up with their own ill-advised plans and expectations that they think will make them better than their peers. We are in a competitive marketplace and instead of investing in our teams, increasing hiring rates and taking decisive action to address a disaster of a hiring process, we are just telling stores to “figure it out” and “stop complaining”.
Did anyone notice the headlines last week? Do we think hourly employees only apply at Macy’s? Do we believe that applicants are going to wait a month of having to reply to endless emails when other companies are hiring applicants on the spot at significantly higher rates?
•Amazon hiring 500,000 people with average pay starting at $17 an hour, new employees will get hiring bonuses of $1,000
•Lowe’s embarks on huge hiring push: 50K associates to be hired, plans to make on the spot job offers
•McDonald’s is hiring 10,000 new employees at company owned stores in the next three months
•Walmart expected to bring in a million people in the next year, minimum hire rates of $15
•Chipotle is hiring 20,000 workers across the U.S
Many competitors have closed in the last year, we have an opportunity to pick up market share that businesses only dream about and we are dropping the ball. Service levels are important and no premium pay plan or elevated threats regarding survey scores are going to impress new customers, only having appropriate staffing levels will do that.