gOOd article:Wal-Mart Target of Health Insurance Legislation

Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 1:48 pm  
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Author: Mandy Minor
Source: articleage.com

Wal-Mart Food Inc., the nation’s and world’s better retailer, is bound acceptable Florida’s better retailer. The alternation opened 50 of its 24-hour Supercenters, mart
, throughout the accompaniment during 2002 and 2003, and there are nine Wal-Mart food in Pinellas County— two Sam’s Clubs, three Supercenters and four approved Wal-Marts.
It is aswell a part of the state’s better clandestine employers, with 77,850 employees—far added than the 54,000 active at Walt Disney World.

According to Wal-Mart’s media relations hotline, there are 3,407 humans active by Wal-Mart in Pinellas County.
With these ample agent rosters appear top costs. Wages, overtime, benefits, taxes and added costs accomplish staffing and its accompanying costs the better amount for about all employers. When a aggregation is big abundant to administer tens of bags of people, methods for acid costs are an affair administration visits daily.
Often administration reduces agent benefits—namely bloom insurance—as a way to accumulate, mart
, costs down, and until afresh this convenance was met with little resistance.

But this ages aldermanic activity in both Maryland and Pennsylvania took barring to this practice. And assembly in 28 added states, including Florida, Connecticut, Kansas, Colorado and Tennessee, are advancing to acquaint agnate legislation. The face of amount accumulation at the better employers—and accurately Wal-Mart—may never be the same.
On Jan. 12 the Maryland Senate voted to override a governor veto of a bill acute companies with added than 10,000 advisers to pay for some health-care, mart
, benefits.

Dubbed the “Wal-Mart Bill,” the legislation is aimed absolutely at the retail giant. It is already accepting a abrogating effect, as Wal-Mart’s shares had their better abatement in a month, closing lower by 83 cents, anon afterwards the vote.
Spurred into activity by the AFL-CIO, which represent over nine actor workers, states are alpha to admit that healthcare costs accept to be paid by someone. And if it’s not employers, the accountability generally avalanche on the state.

“The basal band is that our bloom affliction arrangement is broken—but it didn’t just breach open. Big companies like Wal-Mart are affairs it afar and profiting at taxpayers’ expense,” says John Sweeney, admiral of the AFL- CIO.
Florida accompaniment Rep. Susan Bucher, D-Lantana, has filed a adaptation of the bloom affliction angle for the bounce aldermanic session. It carefully resembles the Maryland measure. Of Wal-Mart’s costs to taxpayers she says “It ability, mart
, be appetizing to abolish this affair as a above one of accumulated welfare, or to altercate that we’re singling out Wal-Mart unfairly.

But facts are facts: Wal-Mart does not just about-face health-care costs assimilate taxpayers, it does so at a akin able-bodied above that of any added employer.”
This legislation, if enacted, would administer to clandestine administration with 10,000 or added employees. These, mart
, companies would be appropriate to absorb at atomic 8% of absolute amount on agent bloom affliction or pay the aberration into a state-administered armamentarium created to abetment the uninsured.

Legislation like this is a absolute acknowledgment to the numbers of humans on Medicaid. In Florida alone,, mart
, an estimated 12,300 of Wal-Mart’s 91,000 advisers relied on Medicaid for bloom affliction advantage in 2004. Wal- Mart’s position is that it has added advisers on Medicaid artlessly because it is the state’s better employer.
Clearly abashed by these aldermanic actions, Wal-Mart has bargain its account bloom allowance premiums—some as low as $11 a month—so that added access akin advisers can allow its aggregation bloom affliction insurance.

Wal-Mart admiral are accusatory the campaign, adage the aggregation provides bloom allowance to about bisected of its employees. Sarah Clark, Wal-Mart Spokesperson, says “More than three-fourths of Wal-Mart assembly accept bloom insurance.”
She aswell commented on the accepted accompaniment of American bloom affliction by adage “The American humans apperceive that accouterment to, mart
, the appropriate interests does annihilation to advice the 46 actor uninsured individuals in this country.

Now is the time for legislators beyond the country to plan calm to acquisition absolute solutions to the bloom affliction challenges adverse every state, every business and every alive family.”
Mandy Minor is the Co-founder and Senior Marketing Consultant for J. Allan Writing and Design Studios. A affiliate of the American Advertising Federation, Mandy is the Achievements Chair of Ad 2 Tampa Bay and a agents biographer, mart
, for the Tampa Bay Sun.

gOOd article:Wal-Mart and Healthcare: What Happens When We Focus on the “Average”

Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 11:24 pm  
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Author: Rick Weaver
Source: articleage.com

Recent legislation enacted, mart
, by the State of Maryland forces employers with more than 10,000 employees to spend a minimum of 8% on health care. Known as the Wal-Mart law, because Wal-Mart is the only employer in the state directly affected by the law, it seeks to recoup dollars the state contends Wal-Mart is costing their Medicaid fund. Thirty other states are considering similar legislation.
The 8% figure was arrived at because that is the “average” being spent nationally by large corporations.

Throughout the years, Wal-Mart worked very hard at keeping prices low. As an executive with Kmart, I met Wal-Mart executives at many conferences and seminars. With every product they sold their desire was to find a way to increase efficiencies so that they could reduce the cost of every item they sold. Most of the efficiencies were in the distribution channel, however at the same time they were finding ways to keep overhead low. One such way was to, mart
, keep employee, mart
, costs down.

The mystique of Wal-Mart and how they grew to be the universe’s largest business, with an economy greater than all but 20 nations, is that Wal-Mart is consistently the lowest priced retailer. This means that from a percentage viewpoint Wal-Mart is spending less on many items including total employee cost, the cause to move merchandise, the cost to transport merchandise, expenditures on real estate, and much more. Once any of those elements changes significantly, Wal-Mart must seek another way to keep prices low or to raise prices.

The latter is what the Wal-Mart attackers are seeking. The two largest groups battling Wal-Mart are comprised of individuals from organizations that have much to gain if employees are unhappy or if Wal-Mart prices were higher. By raising Wal-Mart’s expense on health care Wal-Mart will be distracted by finding other ways to keep their prices low. The hope is they will be unable to do so, making Wal-Mart a less fierce competitor.

Obviously if Wal-Mart is large enough to be Maryland’s only large employer spending less than the average, once they begin to spend the average, the average will go up. To be consistent this would require new legislation to raise the threshold, thus creating a never ending cycle.
The sport of hating Wal-Mart
In some circles, hating Wal-Mart has become a sport. However this overlooks recent studies that have shown the American economy has a lot to be thankful for when it comes to the mega-retailer.

The studies show that Wal-Mart has been instrumental in keeping consumer prices low across the board. Certainly Wal-Mart is the low-price leader. When Wal-Mart first enters a town the local mom-and-pop retailers think that they must compete with Wal-Mart on a price basis. This price distraction is the real culprit when it comes to local business failure following the Wal-Mart grand opening.
As with any business strategy if you can recognize your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses you can develop a plan to overcome those strengths and weaknesses.

There are many things that Wal-Mart will not do. For example, the need for high volume prevents Wal-Mart from carrying specialty products. Local retailers with the insight to focus on the consumer need Wal-Mart cannot meet are the local retailers that thrive off of the increased traffic created by the low-price discounter.
Why below average is good for sales
There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking to raise “below average” to “average” performance.

Sometimes a focus on one “average” may distract an employee or an organization from another “average”, or even an “above average”.
Last year I was coaching a financial planner. His organization noted that not all of their planners were doing their cold calling to find new clients. Their research showed that the average time spent on cold calling was, mart
, an hour per day. They were also very pleased to learn the number of prospects and hour of cold calling would unveil. Dollar signs pierced their cranium as they thought about the prospects to their agency.

Obviously it had to be mandated that every agent spend an hour a day, preferably between 9 and 10 each morning.
In the case of my client this cold call, mart
, period was a time that he normally was intensely involved in networking. The demand of being in the, mart
, office to make the cold calls required that he spend his primetime at networking to make cold calls. His talents, mart
, and personality lent him towards, mart
, networking, mart
, .

In fact he was excellent at networking. However he struggled with cold calling. Actually “struggled” is too mild a word. He hated cold calling. He came off as cold, scripted, and uncaring. He rarely was able to close a deal when the initial contact was via cold calling.
On the other hand, while networking he was in his comfort zone. He was able to get strong leads and even encourage the lead-givers to introduce them to the prospect. Once he had to take his time away from networking to make cold calls he fell from being one of the top five salespeople in his office to a bottom dweller.

Sure his cold calling was now at the average of one hour a day. However it was his networking that put black ink on the bottom line.
The sad part is that the agency thought they had a win-win. The cold call average went up. Because they were focused on the cold calling, they did not realize that his sales had gone down. What they thought was a success was a failure in my client’s eyes. Soon he became discouraged and moved to a different company.
Conclusion
When we focus on the average, we tend to focus on the fact that we are improving below average statistics.

We tend to overlook that we are also reducing the performance of our best performers. So it is with every aspect of an organization. We must look at the entire picture. If we do not look at the total personality of our organization, our competitors, and most importantly our people, we will constantly be seeking to drive to the average. If successful we will be just that, average. The bad news is that inter-organizational and interpersonal, mart
, competition, mart
, does not allow those that are average to be successful.

To succeed one must be above average, particularly in the areas that our customers and employers are most interested.
In the case of Wal-Mart and healthcare, if Wal-Mart spends more on health care than the average, the average will be driven up. Then using the “average” as the barometer, those below average will come up to average creating a never ending spiral. Wal-Mart will not give, mart
, up their price leadership, making this game of playing averages with healthcare expenditures will result in higher prices for everyone.

Rick Weaver is an accomplished business executive with, mart
, a wealth of experience in retail, market analysis, supply chain enhancement, project management, team building, and process improvement. Building on a strong retail background, Rick moved to full supply-chain involvement, working with hundreds of companies to improve sales, processes, and bottom-line results.
As Rick’s interaction in varied industries expanded, he became troubled as he increasingly noticed that people and companies had untapped or unfocused talent.

Coupled with Rick’s passion for training and development, popular style of interactive workshops and seminars, and strong desire for continuous improvement, he founded Max Impact Corporation to be singularly focused on helping individuals, mart
, and organizations achieve high performance.
Rick is a popular speaker at seminars, workshops, and conferences. He has spoken in 43 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, and in Canada and Puerto Rico. He is available to speak at groups of all sizes.

Contact Rick at 248-802-6138 or rick@getmaximpact.com

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