It never ceases to amaze me how companies continue to make the exact same mistakes others have made over and over again. As if somehow they can make it work when others failed. While it's admirable for someone to say that they can do something better than someone else, but it seems a bit foolish to me to say such a thing without first studying what the other did wrong. This failure is even worse when it's a company, and their behavior is solely because they're chasing profit margins instead of sustainability.
What do I mean by sustainability? While yes, companies should be doing more to be environmentally conscious, that's not what I'm referring to in this case. In this case, I mean the long-term lifespan of a company. As in will it still exist in five, ten, fifty, or a hundred years? Investors are interested solely in garnering as much profit as quickly as possible. One only has to look at the sudden influx of microtransactions in video games to start connecting the dots on that issue, but the evils of microtransactions are a whole other topic. No, companies are chasing profits without any concern for whether or not those gains can be sustained long-term, because that's what their investors want. Unfortunately for companies, this leads directly to their downfall, because once they no longer return the increases in profits investors want to see, investors start to leave. First a few, then a few more, then a lot, and the next thing you know the company stock is worth pennies and you're being compared to Sears.
The problem has an easy solution. An easy solution to see, but not necessarily to implement. The solution is to stop hunting down profit increases as if the life of the company depends on it. Instead, companies should be investing in their employees. In an interview with Inc. Magazine, Richard Branson put it best: "...so my philosophy has always been if you can put your staff first, your customer second, and your shareholders third effectively in the end the shareholders do well, the customers do better, and your staff are happy." (You can see the entire video here.) It's a simple way of thinking that leads one to treat employees like people, who have value to the company they work for. People work better when they feel their work is meaningful, valuable, and yes, even profitable.
Even the two biggest companies out there, Google and Amazon, began with the philosophy that the best way to attract talent was by making their company somewhere people would want to work. Admittedly this philosophy has fallen by the wayside. In my admittedly limited opinion, I feel it's because they've gotten too big and stopped looking at their employees as people. They've fallen for their own hype and assume people would just flock to them, so everyone is replaceable because there's a dozen people waiting for those positions to become available.
This mindset doesn't work in retail. If companies want to make the most of their investment in personnel, they need to actually invest in their people. Train employees properly for the jobs they're doing. Give them the tools they need to do their jobs instead of locking them behind ridiculous restrictions. Offer paid vacation time. Offer paid sick time. Look after them when they need help, instead of slapping them in the face with legal mumbo-jumbo so that their issues won't "ruin the company reputation". The mindset of "if you don't like it, leave" has led to companies having an exodus of trained, experienced employees who leave for jobs that may not be as lucrative but are certainly less stressful. Replacing those people isn't as easy as these companies seem to think, either. Retail in particular has got to change how it treats its employees and stop chasing dollar signs, because as online shopping becomes more and more prevalent, the customer service provided by employees is what will make a store stand out.
Not your selection of nick-knacks.