善待僱員有利於企業 ZARA的運營亮點

When Madonna was on tour in Spain a few years ago, teenage girls turned up at her final performance wearing the very outfit she had worn for her first show. They had bought it from Zara, the Spanish retailer.

幾年前，麥當娜(Madonna)在西班牙的巡演到了最後一場時，臺下的少女們穿着她首場演出期間穿的演出服。她們是從西班牙零售商Zara那裏買到這種款式的服裝的。

While most fashion retailers take months to introduce new product lines, Zara’s supply chain can design and deliver new clothes to its 1,500 stores in more than 70 countries within days.

大多數時裝零售商需要幾個月的時間推出新的產品線，而Zara的供應鏈能夠在短短數日內完成新品的設計，並將其交付至70多個國家的1500個門店。

In her book The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton argues that Zara’s investment in staff is crucial to this speed, together with its ability to collect information from employees on what is popular. Zara’s shop assistants, for example, tell managers if customers are requesting a long-sleeved version of a particular shirt.

澤伊內普•託恩(Zeynep Ton)在她的著作《理想工作戰略》(The Good Jobs Strategy)中認爲，Zara具備這種速度的關鍵在於對員工的投資，及其通過僱員對流行趨勢進行信息收集的能力。例如，如果顧客希望某款短袖襯衫有長袖版的話，Zara的店員會向經理反映這種需求。

The question that Ton, an academic at MIT Sloan, set out to answer is how do Zara and other successful retailers treat employees better than rivals, yet still deliver healthy profits and shareholder returns? Her work focuses on low-cost retailers because they compete on price and because it is often argued that the only way companies can keep costs down and prices low is to skimp on labour costs – whether through low wages, minimal benefits or underinvesting in training.

作爲麻省理工斯隆商學院(MIT Sloan)的學者，託恩着手回答的問題是：Zara和其他成功的零售商，是如何在提供比競爭對手更好待遇的前提下，還能實現可觀的利潤及股東回報？她的研究對象是低成本零售商，因爲它們拼的是價格，而且人們往往認爲，企業降低成本及價格的唯一出路在於節省勞動力成本——不管是通過壓低工資和福利，還是通過在培訓上的投入不到位。

As the title implies, The Good Jobs Strategy argues that this is not the case. The author focuses on four low-cost retailers in the US that treat employees well: Costco, the discount retailer, Trader Joe’s, a food store, Mercadona, the Spanish grocer, and QuikTrip, a petrol retailer. It contrasts these with low-paying, “bad” employers such as Walmart, the world’s largest private sector employer.

正如書名所暗示的，《理想工作戰略》認爲，實際情況並非如此。作者聚焦於美國的四家低成本零售商，它們給僱員提供的待遇都不錯：折扣零售商好事多(Costco)、食品連鎖店Trader Joe's、西班牙雜貨商Mercadona，以及汽油便利店QuikTrip。這本書將它們與那些支付低薪的“壞”僱主進行了對比——例如世界最大的私營部門僱主沃爾瑪(Walmart)。

Salespeople and cashiers are also the two largest occupations in the US, even though a typical retail worker earns wages beneath the poverty level. In 2011, staff at Walmart received $585m in public assistance. Moreover, Ton points to studies that have shown that when Walmart has opened a new store, wages have tended to fall in surrounding shops.

售貨員和收銀員也是美國人數最多的兩大職業，儘管一名典型的零售工人的工資尚達不到貧困線。2011年，沃爾瑪員工領到的公共補助總額爲5.85億美元。託恩還提到，一些研究表明，當沃爾瑪開設一家新店時，周邊商店的工資傾向於下降。

If you had invested $100 in Walmart 10 years ago your money would have grown 40 per cent; invest in a company with a “good jobs strategy” such as Costco and your money would have tripled.

如果你在10年前對沃爾瑪投資100美元，那麼你的錢將增值40%；但如果投資一家實行“理想工作戰略”的公司，比如好事多，那麼你的錢將增至初期投資的三倍。

While there are likely to be many reasons for this difference, Ton argues that the decision to give employees low-paid jobs for which they are badly trained ultimately costs companies in lost performance – such as empty shelves, or stock recorded as being on the premises but impossible to find.

雖然產生這一差異的原因可能有多種，但託恩認爲，向僱員支付低薪，而且在培訓方面不願投入，最終會讓公司付出表現不佳的代價——比如，貨架空空如也，或是數據庫的存貨無法找到。

The book identifies some crucial practices that have helped model companies transform their investment in staff into higher profits. These include cross-training employees, offering secure contracts and paying them properly. While Walmart deals with erratic customer traffic by hiring staff at the last minute on hourly rates, Costco shifts employees between jobs and occasionally offers staff unpaid time off work. If they do not take up the offer, Costco takes the financial hit. However, staff often do opt for the unpaid leave because they have regular pay packages and benefits.

該書總結了模範企業的一些重要做法，這些做法幫助它們把對員工的投資轉化爲更高利潤，包括崗位輪換培訓、提供有保障的僱傭合同，以及支付像樣的工資。沃爾瑪在面對不穩定的顧客流量時，會等到最後一刻才聘用鐘點工；而好事多則會調動僱員輪崗，偶爾還向他們提供不帶薪休假的機會。如果他們不接受這個機會，公司會承擔相應的經濟負擔。但好事多的員工往往選擇接受不帶薪休假，因爲他們有正規的薪酬待遇和福利。

Another practice is to give workers more power. Although window displays in Zara are modelled in Spain, shop assistants can suggest local improvements, sending snapshots back to head office for approval.

另一個做法是授予員工更大權力。儘管Zara的櫥窗設計是西班牙總部制定的，但店員可就改進本地的設計提出建議，將快照傳回總部審批。

But Ton’s advice is not limited to employment strategies. She also found that successful retailers offered a smaller range of products and fewer promotions. This helped retailers buy at bigger discounts, avoid confusing customers and forecast sales better.

但託恩的建議並不限於僱傭戰略。她還發現，成功零售商的產品範圍和促銷活動都比較少。這有助於它們在採購時拿到更大折扣，避免讓顧客困惑，並能更好地預測銷售額。

Critics would argue that companies such as Walmart are successful, profitmaking machines, and that without surveying all retailers it is impossible to tell whether combining good employment conditions and standardisation of products really delivers higher profits growth overall or just at a few key companies. But at a time when the complexity of workers’ jobs is increasing and labour force investment declining, this is a methodically researched riposte to cutting staff and wages.

批評人士會辯稱，沃爾瑪這樣的公司是成功的製造利潤的機器；同時在沒有調查全部零售商的情況下，很難說良好工作待遇與產品標準化的結合能否在一般情況下帶來更高的利潤增長，或者這隻適用於少數關鍵企業？不過，在如今這個工作複雜性不斷增加、而對勞動力隊伍的投資不斷下降的時代，這份條理清晰的研究是對裁員降薪的一個有力反駁。