Is it good employer strategy to pay my employees just enough so that they can’t save money, so that they can never walk away from the job?
Like, there is a threshold where if they are able to save X per month, they will eventually use that against you and quit at an inopportune time?
And if that threshold falls below state mandated minimum wage, what steps can be taken to mitigate this?
Nope, it’s a terrible one. Everyone will be constantly looking for new jobs. And would do the bate minimum to not get fired, that’s the contract you’re signing, bare minimum pay for bare minimum work.
Regardless of what you do, it’s likely that you’ll need multiple times the amount of employees to get shit done, because one dedicated employee is worth several doing bare minimum, depending on the job some works simply won’t happen because no one gets paid enough to do them.
Besides that you’ll suffer brain drain, i.e. anyone good enough will leave you, and they won’t accept a raise to stay because if someone offered them double their salary and you tried to match it they would immediately see the bullshit you’d put them through and know that the only way to get a better pay again would be to get a new offer from someplace else.
Anyone bad enough that other companies don’t want would be stuck with you, but there’s a reason other companies don’t want them.
You wouldn’t be able to pull any new talent, you’d get stuck just getting people no one else wants because they’re the only ones willing to work for that low.
Seems to work for Walmart though
Only because they massively displaced a shitload of local business. Same with Amazon. If you have very little skills, where else are you going to work?
Nobody has really answered the last part of my question. I’m not asking whether or not this is ethical, I’m asking how can I keep the employees who don’t leave in a state of perception where they think I’m ready to fire and replace them at any moment. I don’t want them to realize their position and leverage it against me.
I’ve been thinking about holding the promise of upping wage by a dollar and to keep pushing out the date as means of helping them realize how easy their work is. I’m not going to allow non-committed hires to devour the value of my business over what amounts to easy work. They know it’s easy work.
What steps can be taken to mitigate this?
Be an employer of choice. What can you do to make people want to work with you, not out of necessity but because you are better than the alternatives. (Pro tip: if you’re paying the lowest rate you’re allowed to without braking the law you better be offering some other incentive)
This is pretty good satire, and I gotta give you props for sticking to the bit, LunchMoneyThief.
Why are you such a piece of shit? Or is this just bait?
I’ll bite.
Don’t make it related to pay. Make them WANT to work there, and then put a bunch of employment requirements into the contract that sound reasonable but can’t all be done AND accomplish the job.
At that point, all your employees are in breach of contract and you can just investigate and fire anyone who doesn’t seem to be providing value.
You’ll get a few people who position themselves as unfireable anyway, and some people who it will be difficult to prove they broke the contract. And if you fire people too often, you’ll again have retention issues.
Maybe the value of your business isn’t as much as you think it is, or you’re not charging enough for what you sell….