Is it good employer strategy to pay my employees just enough so that they can’t save money, so that they can never walk away from the job?
Like, there is a threshold where if they are able to save X per month, they will eventually use that against you and quit at an inopportune time?
And if that threshold falls below state mandated minimum wage, what steps can be taken to mitigate this?
Yo it’s no stupid questions, not no evil questions.
It is a terrible employer strategy that all but guarantees you will have a high turnover rate as people use their off hours to find better paying work.
It also ensures any public you have to face will consistently be interacting with a work force that could not give any less of a fuck, because you are literally not paying them enough to.
The only conceivable way this is a good business strategy is if you are either a short term seeking nepo baby, get all your business advice from one, or are yourself a complete and utter drooling moron who has never once taken even a beginner’s course in proper employee retention.
Do. Not. Do. This.
Doing this is the kind of advice Boston Consulting Group would give shortly before Citadel cellar boxes your company.
It’s a seriously bad idea. pay shit, get shit employees. It will see OP’s company providing shit service, cost more in both turnover and having to fix the shit that their shit employees shat all over, as well as driving customers away.
It’s also immoral.
And yet it seems to work for Walmart. Or am I missing something?
Is Walmart typically known for having highly skilled, dedicated workers?
Or desperate folks that would leave for another opportunity without a second thought?
I guess, “it works” but I wouldn’t say it’s REALLY working.
Your best employees will be snatched away by other companies, offering them an onboarding package that takes care of the cost of moving. Your worst employees will be forced to stay with you.
Thank you. This is the right answer.
Every emplooyer’s dream is to provide less pay. Not because of some evil thinking but every penny they dont spend on an empoyee is a profit.
During covid I was desperate for a job and when asked how much salary I expect I gave low figure and was hired. One year later another company offered me 3x my salary. When I told my company am quitting they nade counter offer of 4xc I still said no and left.
You’re paying for labor. If you’re the cheapest option retention will be poor, knowledge and experience will leave and your business will (and should) suffer.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
Pay peanuts get monkeys
There is the old saying that “People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.” My advice is to go to therapy first, I think the question will sort itself out after that.
It sounds like you’re looking for slaves. There’s a reason slavery is illegal.
If this isn’t deliberately rage bait, there is something very wrong with you.
No. The best strat is to pay as much as you can and treat them as well as you can so that your best workers stay happy and stay longer. Don’t let your most cavebrained competitors beat you on talent and leave you with the underperformers nobody else wants. If you can’t afford to invest in quality then you’re already losing.
Honestly the top 75% as an average is a good target. You want some all stars and you want some regular players. What’s really important is to have respect from top to bottom that everyone is important. An all-star is never a prima dona… the opposite in fact, because they’re paid more to lead and to improve and guide others.
This isn’t actually a serious question, right?
Gotta be flamebait.
I think it’s frustrated role playing.
Look at me! I’m a fancy businessman! Hur dur dur! Pay cuts for half of you and pink slips for the rest!
It’s insane to think it’s genuine
No, their anxiety will be through the roof and they’ll do a shitty job - all the actually good people will jump ship anyways.
The best strategy is to pay above market rate to attract talent and offer options to reinforce everyone’s investment in seeing the company succeed.
No, maslows hierarchy of needs mandates a lack of savings equating with a lack of stability at lower tiers and hence your employees will fail to function at higher levels. So you need to pay more than minimum rates in every role, everywhere, if you want to actually have people and not worried as fuck drones.
Now, how much more depends on local factors - but here’s a quick rule: if they add value to your business pass on about 25% of that profit from that individual. Finding a profit for a person can be challening, this is why you get a HR person and accountants.
Wait so are employees lucky if they get 25% of the money they earn their employer beyond their cost to the employer?
That is, if I cost 100k including benefits and support staff costs and my work directly generates 200k profit over all costs, does that mean that the business should pass 50k to me and take the remaining 150k in order to follow the quick rule?
Yup, welcome to capitalism!
The money they earn is income, not pure profit. The business usually has other expenses that have to be covered. In that case 25% is usually not a bad deal.
I attempted to clarify that I understood that the income of the employee is not part of the profit
25% is a terrible deal and that was my point
Nope, it’s a terrible one. Everyone will be constantly looking for new jobs. And would do the bate minimum to not get fired, that’s the contract you’re signing, bare minimum pay for bare minimum work.
Regardless of what you do, it’s likely that you’ll need multiple times the amount of employees to get shit done, because one dedicated employee is worth several doing bare minimum, depending on the job some works simply won’t happen because no one gets paid enough to do them.
Besides that you’ll suffer brain drain, i.e. anyone good enough will leave you, and they won’t accept a raise to stay because if someone offered them double their salary and you tried to match it they would immediately see the bullshit you’d put them through and know that the only way to get a better pay again would be to get a new offer from someplace else.
Anyone bad enough that other companies don’t want would be stuck with you, but there’s a reason other companies don’t want them.
You wouldn’t be able to pull any new talent, you’d get stuck just getting people no one else wants because they’re the only ones willing to work for that low.
Seems to work for Walmart though
Only because they massively displaced a shitload of local business. Same with Amazon. If you have very little skills, where else are you going to work?
Nobody has really answered the last part of my question. I’m not asking whether or not this is ethical, I’m asking how can I keep the employees who don’t leave in a state of perception where they think I’m ready to fire and replace them at any moment. I don’t want them to realize their position and leverage it against me.
I’ve been thinking about holding the promise of upping wage by a dollar and to keep pushing out the date as means of helping them realize how easy their work is. I’m not going to allow non-committed hires to devour the value of my business over what amounts to easy work. They know it’s easy work.
What steps can be taken to mitigate this?
Be an employer of choice. What can you do to make people want to work with you, not out of necessity but because you are better than the alternatives. (Pro tip: if you’re paying the lowest rate you’re allowed to without braking the law you better be offering some other incentive)
This is pretty good satire, and I gotta give you props for sticking to the bit, LunchMoneyThief.
I’ll bite.
Don’t make it related to pay. Make them WANT to work there, and then put a bunch of employment requirements into the contract that sound reasonable but can’t all be done AND accomplish the job.
At that point, all your employees are in breach of contract and you can just investigate and fire anyone who doesn’t seem to be providing value.
You’ll get a few people who position themselves as unfireable anyway, and some people who it will be difficult to prove they broke the contract. And if you fire people too often, you’ll again have retention issues.
Maybe the value of your business isn’t as much as you think it is, or you’re not charging enough for what you sell….
Why are you such a piece of shit? Or is this just bait?
There’s an alternative strategy of making it a place they’re happy to work at. It’s more expensive, sure, but it gets you better workers instead of only the desperate.
Happy workers stay longer and don’t leave rotting fish in the vents right before quitting out of frustration.
If your strategy as an employer is how to keep your people in indentured servitude, that makes you a cunt. Be a good boss - help your employees achieve their goals and get to the next step in their career. That will help you attract newer talent when you need it.
This is why, minimal wage should be high enough that people can live. It’s not normal, that in many western nation, a minimum wage worker cannot afford rent in non social housing and it still poor enough to be eligible to welfare program as soon as they have kids
