Does the new ASET beneficial to hourly employees? Part 2

Image: Gregory Szarkiewicz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

ASET according to RGIS
The newly overhauled ASET is a profit generating novelty designed by RGIS. The company has boasted strategic gains in 2009 despite the significant reduction of many big accounts and frequency of inventories for the last 12 months. 

So, the logical question would be: How did RGIS managed to hit a good strategic gains? The key answer lies on how the company  streamlines its expenditures, and other cost-effective measures which includes but not limited to:

• Significant reduction of employees from the middle and upper management positions.
• Salary paycuts.
• Getting rid of administrative employees in District levels.
• Cutting of administrative costs such as supplies, equipment, orders, hiring, department budgets, and other expenditures.
• IT Infrastructure projects such as deployments, purchases, software development, etc. have been postponed or cancelled.
• The standardization of pay thru the introduction of ASET system, for hourly employees which gave RGIS better control over "unwanted raises and exceeding pay cap."
• Strategic alliances thru acquisitions in the last 5 years, more significantly that from Blackstone Group. 

"... the RGIS hourly employee could lost an average
of $3,366.00 per year since the ASET has been
implemented, more than enough to purchase

 travel and accommodations for 2 to the
Bahamas Island of Paradise!"

These streamlining factors of the company were more than enough to cover potential losses brought about by the recession from 2008 until 2009. Now, that is as far as RGIS management side is concerned. How about its hourly employees? Do hourly employees really benefited from the standardization of pay as evidenced by the creation of the ASET system?

The answer depends entirely to whom the question was addressed:

From the management point of view:

more work + the same pay + less hours = better profit

From the hourly employee point of view:

more work + the same pay + less hours = lesser income


ASET according to its hourly employees
For the next 3 minutes, I am going to prove that ASET may generate lesser income for the hourly Auditor and therefore, disadvantageous in that aspect. Since the creation of APH, speed has been increased, with the same pay, for a lesser time.

Observation shows that an average of 35% of inventory time has been reduced after the implementation of the new ASET compared to average inventory time before its implementation. Below is a similar data taken from a middle size grocery store. The actual store name was witheld.

Store Name : FCC
Expected merchandise quantity: 250,000

Variables                            Before ASET     |           After ASET
______________________________________________________________

Average Merchandise        250,000                       250,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Store APH requirements       3,000                           4,270
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average Inventory time       6.1 hrs.                         4.4 hrs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staffing requirements          14                                12
______________________________________________________________

Observations:

1. An RGIS Auditor could lost an average of 1.7 hrs per inventory event.
2. APH store requirements also have increased.
3. Inventory Time has dramatically decreased.

Since RGIS has increased the APH and we know that pay is directly commensurate to the amount of time you have peformed to a given inventory, statistically, you get a relatively lesser income. Even if RGIS argues that productivity depends from store to store, still, the truth remains:

A taxi carrying 3 people running at 60 mph to a designated point will likely to arrive first than a taxi carrying 2 people running at 45 mph with the same destination point under normal driving conditions. Extrapolate this to a 10-taxi scenario and you get the average results. That is exactly the same principle when I said that:

more work + the same pay + less hours = lesser income

In statistics, we speak of averages. Lets apply the above data:

• Possible lost hours average per day (assuming you only work 1 store per day): 1.7 hrs
• Possible lost hours average per week (assuming you work 5 stores a week): 8.5 hrs
• Possible lost hours per month: 34 hrs
• Possible lost hours per year (excluding low month: December): 374 hrs

To calculate possible income losses for the whole year:

374 X $9.00 (assuming your starting pay is $9) = $3,366.00


Therefore, the RGIS hourly Auditor could lost an average of $3,366.00 per year since the ASET has been implemented, more than enough to purchase travel and accommodations for 2 to the Bahamas Island of Paradise!

From your District alone, how much profit does RGIS can get per year assuming that your District performs 3,000 inventories per year? Do the math.

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