Staffing reductions are not a retail phenomenon.
Although what managers generally fail to understand* is that cutting staff does not guarantee to make the work place more efficient. Cutting to close to the bone in the name of profit usually results in the loss of customer satisfaction and ultimately customers/contracts.
*Perhaps they do and choose to actively ignore it, as by the time it matters (to them), they have either moved on or are waiting for the big fat redundancy cheque/transferring with the contract.
Now most of that I utterly agree with!!
Yes, cutting staff, certainly from the retail sales floor which is of course my area of expertise, does damage the ability of the business to provide the top level of Customer Care I for one was passionate about. It was not good for the business at the sharp end, and as a manager I often argued that at Board level.
However, in retail, when you have stores that are not profitable due to the burden of costs, the main element one being the wage expenditure, you have a choice. Cut the staff bill, a'nd bring the store back into profit, or sell up with all staff involved losing their jobs!
In the 1980,s I became responsible for a budget of £80 million, and 3,000 staff. From then on I often in my career had to make hard choices, cutting other costs when possible, but all too often having to reduce the wage bill to keep within profit targets. That is because there were, and still are, constant pressures from competitors who were reducing their prices which we needed to match to stay competitive. At the same time there are increased rent and rate bills squeezing the viability of the business, let alone increases (quite rightly) in legal minimum hourly wage levels.
As a senior manager I had to keep the P&L balanced, producing the level of profit for our multi-billion dollar International mother company that they expected on their investment. That is what is being faced daily by my opposite numbers in the major retail companies now, with more and more the only choice is to close expensive retail units. I am sure I do not need to name all those currently in trouble and those already expired. Managers eventually lose their jobs as well, and I had to make redundant all too many in my time. So, yes, we as managers fully understand what we are doing, and for many of us it is heartbreaking to see your retail empire fading. But, the Customer is dictating where they shop, when they shop, and crucially where they can get the cheapest prices. This is increasingly not in expensive to run superstores but online or in discount stores where they are already on limited staffing levels, and do not display items in a true traditional way, but in bulk straight out of the cases on shop floors.
That is where we are at, but big change is still happening. Tesco, Sainsbury, M&S, John Lewis, W.H.Smith, and the others will, as I have stated before, be in definite danger of following all the others I have seen go in my lifetime.
"Managers" of any business can work miracles with what they have got, but to stop the current trend of retail disintegration will take far more.