littleflute
commented
2 years ago Transcript
00:00 Transcriber: 00:04 In 1995, a fellow named Chris Klebba decided to open a gym 00:08 in his hometown of Northville, Michigan. 00:11 Fitness had changed his life, 00:12 and he wanted others in small-town Michigan 00:15 to have the same experience. 00:16 But the problem with gyms is they can be intimidating. 00:20 It's the ultimate irony. 00:21 You go to a gym to get in shape, but if you're out of shape, 00:24 you feel like you need to get in shape just to show up. 00:27 That's why as many as 50 percent of gym members quit within the first year, 00:32 which is fine if you open a gym in New York or LA 00:34 with millions of people. 00:36 But in a small town, you might simply run out of customers. 00:40 Now many gyms try to solve this problem by making it difficult to quit. 00:45 So now not only am I feeling guilty about not going to the gym, 00:49 but I’m stuck paying 100 dollars a month, and I’m still not getting any thinner. 00:54 But Chris decided to do something different. 00:58 Chris decided to invest in his workers. 01:01 He hired overly helpful, overly friendly employees 01:04 who at any moment were eager to step in 01:07 and help you learn how to use a piece of equipment 01:09 without making you feel like you're being judged. 01:12 The idea was for the 55-year-old mom or dad, 01:16 who’d never been to a gym before in their lives, 01:18 to feel welcome and comfortable immediately. 01:21 Now my question as a private equity investor is: 01:26 Could this really be profitable? 01:28 There's an old joke about a man who's had too much to drink 01:31 looking for his keys under a streetlight. 01:33 A cop comes by and offers to help 01:36 and asks where he thinks he lost them. 01:38 "In the park," comes the response, 01:40 "but I'm looking here because the light's better." 01:43 That's a little how we investors look at companies today. 01:48 We know that value at companies is driven by people, 01:50 but we focus on short-term profit because it's so much easier to measure. 01:55 I’ve worked in and around private equity for 25 years 02:00 on six continents, 02:01 and I've seen this error in thinking again and again and again. 02:06 In private equity, 02:07 we buy companies and seek to improve them 02:10 so we can sell them at a profit. 02:12 But very often that improvement comes in the form of cutting costs, 02:16 especially labor costs. 02:18 Private equity employs roughly nine million people 02:22 and has cut over a million jobs in the past decade. 02:26 Too often we ask a company for their org chart 02:28 just to figure out who is getting fired. 02:31 Now I think investors should take pride for helping to make companies lean, 02:37 but I'm worried that we may have done our job too well 02:41 and are now at risk of starving companies of the people 02:44 that they need to be successful. 02:47 So the big opportunity for investors, for executives and for you 02:53 is to create rather than cut good jobs. 02:58 Creating good jobs is now the focus of my work as a social impact investor. 03:03 But to create good jobs, you first need a definition of a good job, 03:06 which was surprisingly hard to find. 03:09 Spreadsheets and numbers are comforting, but people are complicated, 03:13 which is why impact investing can sometimes feel squishy. 03:17 Good for the soul, perhaps, but risky for the pocketbook. 03:21 But my partners and I work at a company 03:24 that prides itself on using data to solve problems. 03:27 So we spent the last two years looking at all the academic research, 03:32 reading all the case studies. 03:33 We interviewed human capital experts 03:35 and surveyed workers across hundreds of companies. 03:38 And from that work, we developed a common sense definition of a good job, 03:43 one that correlates with worker productivity 03:46 and helps us to build better companies. 03:49 So here it is. 03:51 A good job is where a worker, one, is fairly treated. 03:57 Two, has a promising future. 04:00 Three, feels psychologically safe. 04:03 And four, has a sense of purpose. 04:06 Now by this definition, only about a third of jobs today 04:11 qualify as good jobs. 04:14 But that's where data-driven impact investing can help. 04:17 By putting hard numbers to each of these conditions, 04:19 we can score each job at the companies we invest in 04:22 and then work to improve the number of good jobs at these companies. 04:26 So let's go through each of these four conditions in turn, 04:28 and as we do, think about the place where you work. 04:31 How does it measure up? 04:33 If the answer is "not good," don't worry, 04:35 you can help point your company in the right direction. 04:38 So here we go. 04:40 Number one, a worker is fairly treated. 04:43 Now we spend roughly a third of our adult lives working. 04:48 So whether you work at Marshall's or Microsoft, 04:51 you want your employer to pay you fairly for all that time. 04:55 But many investors see worker pay as a zero-sum game. 05:00 Whatever a company gives to workers must somehow come at our expense, 05:03 which is why when Home Depot announced early in COVID 05:07 that they would be offering danger pay and making investments in worker safety, 05:12 they saw their market value crash by billions of dollars. 05:17 But our research found over 100 studies that show that appropriate incentives, 05:22 attractive benefits 05:24 like retirement accounts and health care and things like flexible schedules 05:28 more than pay for themselves 05:30 through improved productivity, higher retention, lower hiring costs. 05:35 Home Depot itself is a company that's built on the idea 05:39 of providing better service to customers by employing experts on its shop floors. 05:43 People who have seen your problem before 05:45 because they've worked in home repair and construction, 05:47 and they can help you to fix it better. 05:50 Now Home Depot is thriving today thanks to its investment in workers. 05:55 Now fair pay is a critical, critical thing, 05:58 but it's not the only thing that matters. 06:00 Which brings us to our second condition: a promising future. 06:04 Fast food restaurants not only pay low wages, 06:08 they also offer very little in terms of learning and growth, 06:11 which is why their employees quit after six to 12 months on average. 06:15 Think about that the next time you get rude service at the drive-thru window. 06:19 But training and career path can help to solve this riddle. 06:24 Restaurants like Tender Greens in California 06:27 and Boloko in Boston 06:28 offer training to their low-wage workers 06:31 that qualifies them for management roles. 06:33 So you might start out as a dishwasher earning 12 bucks an hour 06:37 and then with the right training, 06:38 you can become a restaurant manager in a matter of months, 06:41 making nearly three times that much. 06:43 Now the prospect of tripling your wage is a powerful motivator. 06:47 And the data shows that workers are much more loyal and dedicated 06:50 when they feel that their company is helping them to build a career. 06:54 Our third condition, psychological safety, 06:57 should be a fairly obvious one. 06:59 Think of the best boss you've ever had, 07:02 the one that motivated you to go above and beyond at work. 07:05 I bet that person was a listener. 07:08 Because the modern workplace is increasingly a place 07:10 of communication and collaboration. 07:13 But many workers find it difficult or risky to speak up. 07:17 Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard has studied this issue 07:20 in government, nonprofits and companies 07:23 and found that most people's first instinct is to self-protect. 07:28 Let's face it, life's too short to correct your boss's mistake 07:31 if you think you might get fired as a result. 07:34 Not speaking up is invisible, 07:36 but it can cost the company valuable ideas. 07:39 It can squander employee talent or worse, 07:42 it can put customers or employees at physical risk. 07:46 Google found from its quest to create the perfect team 07:50 that the most important ingredient was not the people involved 07:54 but rather the team's overall willingness to share and listen. 07:58 It also found that great teams don't hide from their mistakes, 08:02 but rather embrace them as opportunities for learning 08:05 and to add to the overall IQ of their companies. 08:08 Which brings us to purpose. 08:10 It's a lot easier to share and listen to others 08:14 if you and your colleagues feel passionately about your work. 08:18 But do you feel passionately about the idea of going to work each day 08:21 for the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value 08:24 for investors you've never met? 08:27 It's just not a very energizing idea. 08:31 Humans, unlike machines, want to feel connected to a higher purpose. 08:35 They want to feel proud and useful. 08:38 And fortunately, most companies out there do exist for a reason. 08:42 But it can be hard to tell when so many of their mission statements 08:45 read like they were generated by a robot. 08:48 I actually used an online mission statement generator for this talk 08:51 to see what would come back. 08:54 "The mission of my TED talk is to offer smart insights with empathy, 08:59 care and thoughtfulness." 09:01 Not bad for a computer. 09:04 But a good mission statement is more than just nice words on a PowerPoint. 09:08 A good mission statement can be the most distilled form of strategy, 09:12 the guiding light for a company and its employees. 09:14 That fitness chain I mentioned earlier, 09:16 Impact Fitness, 09:18 has a very clear mission to offer health through fitness 09:21 in underserved communities, 09:23 and they're deadly serious about it. 09:25 The founder, Chris, likes to repeat that mission at company meetings. 09:29 Most gym owners would be thrilled if their customers never showed up, 09:33 so long as they keep paying the monthly bill. 09:35 But Chris wants people to show up at workout in his gyms and get healthier. 09:39 That's why he not only tracked gym usage, 09:43 but tied it to executive pay. 09:46 The company has gone from strength to strength, 09:48 growing from that single gym in Northville, Michigan, 09:51 to now over three dozen gyms across small-town Michigan, 09:54 Indiana and now Canada. 09:56 And it's done so in a way 09:58 that their employees have every reason to be proud of. 10:02 It's an old corporate chestnut 10:04 that our employees are our most valuable asset. 10:08 Today those words ring as hollow as the automated voice, 10:12 telling us how important our call is when we've been on hold for 10 minutes. 10:16 (Laughter) 10:17 But fortunately, creating good jobs isn't rocket science. 10:21 These four conditions: fair treatment, 10:24 a promising future, psychological safety and purpose 10:27 are relatively easy to track and improve. 10:31 And to do that, though, requires investors and executives 10:36 to work together. 10:38 Because too often well-meaning CEOs 10:41 are cut short by short-term oriented investors 10:44 and the boards that represent them. 10:46 But I believe with a better measure of good jobs and the associated benefits, 10:52 investors will support more investments in workers. 10:55 Because who wouldn’t want to create good jobs 10:57 if you're creating more valuable companies at the same time? 11:00 And our research shows that companies with a higher proportion of good jobs 11:06 grow faster and are more profitable. 11:09 They attract better talent and are more innovative. 11:12 Investors ignore this issue at their peril 11:16 because in today's economy, 11:18 good jobs aren't just good for society, 11:20 they're good business. 11:22 Thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWyQNCOow7A https://www.yout.com/watch?v=kWyQNCOow7A