A few excerpts from Flugbegleiter links
And Sinegal says he's also built a loyal work force. In fact, Costco has the lowest employee turnover rate in retailing. Its turnover is five times lower than its chief rival, Wal-Mart. And Costco pays higher than average wages -- $17 an hour -- 40 percent more than Sam's Club, the warehouse chain owned by Wal-Mart. And it offers better-than-average benefits, including health care coverage to more than 90 percent of its work force.
Costco doesn't have a P.R. department and it doesn't spend a dime on advertising. There's a real business advantage to treating employees well, Sinegal said. "Imagine that you have 120,000 loyal ambassadors out there who are constantly saying good things about Costco. It has to be a significant advantage for you," he explained.
In an era when many CEOs are seen as greedy and sometimes corrupt, Sinegal is proving that good guys can finish first -- and without all the corporate frills. Sinegal even sends out his own faxes from his bare-bones office-without-walls at company headquarters near Seattle. But the most remarkable thing about Sinegal is his salary -- $350,000 a year, a fraction of the millions most large corporate CEOs make.
"I figured that if I was making something like 12 times more than the typical person working on the floor, that that was a fair salary," he said.
Sinegal is unfazed by his critics. "Wall Street is in the business of making money between now and next Tuesday," he said. "We're in the business of building an organization, an institution that we hope will be here 50 years from now. And paying good wages and keeping your people working with you is very good business."
If I want a loyalty, I'll get a dog
Geoff Dixon
Do you think QF has 38 000 ambassadors?
