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IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

fortune.com

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Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#51

Post by cscurmudgeon »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #31
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #11

Can someone explain to me why corporate management seems unable to grasp the concept of properly paying and providing benefits for their employees to increase retention and have more successful hiring? Like...is it actual incompetence? Or do they know it's the answer, but just don't want to do it? I just can't grasp why a manager would refuse to provide proper pay and benefits and then get a Surprised Pikachu face wh…

It’s not any more complicated than short term rent seeking from investors That’s literally it Investors hire managers that will ensure that investors remain the top priority for the lifecycle of the firm To such an extent that they made up fake rules like the idea that corporate officers have a fiduciary requirement to investors like a mutual fund manager does This is because the goal of financializing a company is t…

> rules like the idea that corporate officers have a fiduciary requirement to investors

What makes it a fake rule? Why should it be any other way within bounds of the law?

> It’s not any more complicated than short term rent seeking from investors

Any evidence?

Doesn't "short term rent seeking" contradict "top priority for the lifecycle of the firm"?

Would love a reference or two that investors force this. I know activist investors exist, but only for a fraction of companies.

Do customers flock to companies that treat employees much better?

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#52

Post by ericd »

Iulioh wrote: post #10
mensetmanusman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a primordial forest, and why is its wood so easy to break when in the form of a cabinet?

A lot of high end ikea stuff is REALLY good, it's not all honeycomb crap. Honestly it's ikea or luxury stuff, anything else does not make sense. You can't beat ikea quality and quality at any price point.

Yeah, we've been finding the same, a lot of the middle tier stuff might look nice, but it's usually kind of crap, maybe because they just don't have the same scale. Feels like the fast fashion equivalent of furniture, a lot of times.

As an alternative, we've found antique shops that have amazing quality furniture for less than ikea's high end lines, if you're ok with the older styles.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#53

Post by RandomWorker »

jfim wrote: post #12
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #11

Can someone explain to me why corporate management seems unable to grasp the concept of properly paying and providing benefits for their employees to increase retention and have more successful hiring? Like...is it actual incompetence? Or do they know it's the answer, but just don't want to do it? I just can't grasp why a manager would refuse to provide proper pay and benefits and then get a Surprised Pikachu face wh…

Because the dollars are easy to measure, but the employee happiness and other fuzzier metrics aren't. Just like we've known for a while that getting software developers their own offices increases productivity (but costs money/doesn't look trendy), or that getting rid of senior aeronautical engineers might lower quality over time (but saves money).

In the article they said it cost the company $5,000 per employee that left before the first year. So, before they took action they probably measured the money.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#55

Post by defrost »

from-nibly wrote: post #22
malfist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm a DINK, don't have kids, never plan to have kids, don't even like kids. But child care is important to both the parents and society. Not subsidizing child care often means one parent has to leave the workforce, and that's almost always worse off for everyone than if they were able to afford child care and can contribute

Right, because raising kids isn't contributing to society.

That's exactly why child care workers who look after packs of 15 to 20 kids at a time should be highly valued and paid a decent wage.

It's how villages worked in the past, most adults did non child related work much of the time, some adults and some older children kept an eye on what the pooled group of kids were up to .. watching, sometimes educating, sometimes leading them in "work" building things, cooking, hunting, clearing fields etc. in small ways.

It's a better use of labour than splitting every pair of adults into one for this type of work, the other always does child care.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#56

Post by dredmorbius »

misterbwong wrote: post #6

OP's link should really include the full title: Ikea’s boss solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare Cutting it off there just makes it seem like ikea thinks "more money = happy workers" when in reality it is more nuanced than that.

HN has an 80 character title max length. The full original title is 157 characters, nearly double that.

The alternatives generally suggested are to shorten the original title, omitting needless descriptives or words (e.g., counts, emotives, etc.) if possible, or barring that, to substitute alternative text, preferably from a subtitle or passage from the article (both to avoid editorialising):

dang comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908533>

Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> ("In Submissions", title guidance.)

Something's got to give, though, and the submitted title is accurate so far as it goes.

If HN's readers can't be trusted to read even the title of an article, well, the whole premise of a an article-based discussion site seems somewhat imperiled. This may well be the case, of course ...

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#57

Post by pembrook »

djbusby wrote: post #34
WheatMillington wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers are balancing multiple competing issues. Yes staff happiness and retention is important, but there is going to be some staff turnover no matter what. At the same time budgets need to be managed - managers simply can't pay staff whatever they please, businesses need to be functional and profitable.

Some firms are very profitable and still pay many workers very low, eg: Amazon and Walmart. They have money to pay more but they just don't.

Actually they don’t have the money. Retail is notoriously a cutthroat, thin margin business.

Walmart is a public company, so you can just look at their profit margins. They’re sub-3%.

Amazons margins are only higher because of AWS.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#58

Post by stephenr »

Iulioh wrote: post #10
mensetmanusman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a primordial forest, and why is its wood so easy to break when in the form of a cabinet?

A lot of high end ikea stuff is REALLY good, it's not all honeycomb crap. Honestly it's ikea or luxury stuff, anything else does not make sense. You can't beat ikea quality and quality at any price point.

To be honest they are pretty clear about it in their packaging.

If it says solid wood it's probably fine.

If it says particle board or fibre board or something other than solid wood it's an "assemble it once and never move it again" piece at best, and a "keep it for a few years" piece at worst.

It's not like it's a problem unique to ikea. Buying particle board or mdf furniture is always going to give you a much worse product (in terms of quality and longevity) compared to something made with solid wood, or at the very least with decent quality plywood.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#59

Post by yellow_postit »

malfist wrote: post #20
jp57 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidizing childcare is also "more money", but only for some workers. If the others don't notice or don't care that they're getting paid less for the same work that's great for the company. I am in favor of flexible work arrangements, and I have no idea if those have costs to the company, or how much more you'd need to pay the workers to accept the less flexible arrangements.

Look, I'm a DINK, don't have kids, never plan to have kids, don't even like kids. But child care is important to both the parents and society. Not subsidizing child care often means one parent has to leave the workforce, and that's almost always worse off for everyone than if they were able to afford child care and can contribute

This is such a regressive view — a household that can only function on 2 incomes is more stressful than one that can operate on 1. Not saying earning potential needs to be the same — but claiming 1 is worse than 2 doesn’t hold water and is a pathological case.

In the US it’s a shame we so under/de value child rearing as somehow “less than”

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#60

Post by canuckthrow »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #40
jamesrom wrote: post #35

Doing stuff that makes people happy makes people happy. In other news, water found to be wet.

It's a big deal because other large companies invent "open offices" and "unlimited vacation" policies.

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