If you work for a public company, you have the ability to get the Real Deal on their plans.
From TFA:
> Although Jennifer Brogan, Stop & Shop’s director of external communications, assured New Food Economy that the robot is not meant to replace workers, Ahold Delieze has explicitly told shareholders that the company is investing in automation and artificial intelligence to supplement or even replace human labor.
Management lies to employees all the time about future plans, staffing levels, job roles, etc. But they can't lie to their investors. (Or, they usually share the worker-hostile plans more easily)
So if you're curious about your company, dial into the earnings calls, read the investor relations press releases, etc. That's where you'll get the better info.
I don’t think one needs to do all of that to understand that people prefer to spend less money than more money for the same thing. If you’re not expecting your employer to be looking into ways to reduce costs, just like everyone tries to reduce costs in their personal life, then I would say you’re intentionally oblivious to reality.
Depends. A business can be focused on creating value for its shareholders and owners, or it can be focused on creating value for its employees and owners.
If you don't view the purpose of a business as needing to extract and funnel wealth upwards it doesn't need to come down to spending more vs spending less, spending more might even further the goal of the business if you view its purpose as creating jobs for people.
Essentially, it is possible to consider employees as an asset instead of a fungible commodity.
In a low margin commodity business, such as retail and grocery stores (that don’t cater to top 10% by wealth), it absolutely does come down to spending less.
Proof is the success of Walmart, Amazon, Aldi, Costco, Dollar General etc. Customers don’t care about anything but buying goods at the lowest price.
This is a great example of how cost cutting doesn't always mean rock bottom wages. Costco and Sam's Club are good comps. Yet they're way different when it comes to their workforce strategy:
I don't think it's naive to wonder about future staffing plans or employee relations. Some businesses genuinely see an alignment between profitability and hiring, or between profitability and increasing their employee morale. Others will cynically parrot these things as "Important" but will not really treat them as such.
To find out what category your company belongs to, it helps to see how the conversations they have with owners differs from those that they have with the workforce.
I once worked for a company that was honest to a fault with all of us. Potential layoffs were telegraphed months in advance. The things they told us they cared about happened to match up with their subsequent actions. I've also worked for places where the internal employee communication was so clearly disingenuous that we started to just invert whatever was said. That had a material negative effect on the business, as all the best talent left when they could, leaving an organization that just couldn't perform (and profit!) as well as it could have.
> So if you're curious about your company, dial into the earnings calls, read the investor relations press releases, etc. That's where you'll get the better info.
Good point. Lying to your employees or customers is unethical, but lying to your investors is illegal (securities fraud, and "everything is securities fraud", as Matt Levine frequently points out in his Bloomberg column "Money Stuff").
All it does is monitor for hazards and report them so that a human can address the issue. Nobody is going to have a practical and affordable robot that can restock shelves any time soon.
From TFA:
> Although Jennifer Brogan, Stop & Shop’s director of external communications, assured New Food Economy that the robot is not meant to replace workers, Ahold Delieze has explicitly told shareholders that the company is investing in automation and artificial intelligence to supplement or even replace human labor.
Management lies to employees all the time about future plans, staffing levels, job roles, etc. But they can't lie to their investors. (Or, they usually share the worker-hostile plans more easily)
So if you're curious about your company, dial into the earnings calls, read the investor relations press releases, etc. That's where you'll get the better info.