BHS goes on-line - why this makes sense - the cost savings are staggering and the model is bad news for the jobs market

BHS is no more on the High Street and is now going on-line.

What are the implications of this trend?

The shock news of BHS's demise has been compounded by the decision to relaunch this business, in an on-line format only.

This raises the question why, if it couldn't make the High Street pay? Because the High Street retail business model is becoming too expensive. Bricks and mortar, rents, staff costs, retail staff not selling all the time in the main.

Lets look at some costs and facts.

Shop assistants might largely not be engaged in selling

for most of each working hour they are employed.

Suit you...

If we show some basic figures, we can see the benefits of changing to on-line only retail model.

We will use the quoted figures from the BHS wiki page of 11,000 employees and 164 stores, all other figures are estimated and for example only.

If you had 11,000 employees on the High Street, On-line you might exist with as few as 100.

At an example of paying £15,000 per employee, this could cost you:

£165,000,000.00 for 11,000 employees at £15,000.00

£1,500,000.00 for 100 employees at £15,000.00

Big saving.

Operating stores 164, value estimate £82,000,000.00 in bricks and mortar

Warehouse operation, value estimate £3,000,000.00 as a big shed

Neither value includes retail stock. Based on outright ownership.

Big savings all round and headache for Landlords if only leased and you do not renew.

The largest cost of a business is staff, which is also its best asset, apart from a good product or service.

Bean counters preferring the 'least cost option' are going down the 'on-line' approach and scaling back the retail 'boots on the ground.'

Many retail place jobs are being advertised as part-time only these days and they are

'optimising the staff to be there when the customers are' as the key driver.

Unlike the motor trade which relies on big profits from single sales, they can afford to have someone hanging about for 63 hours a week on low pay as they will make it up on commission.

Retail in shops is a different animal. Usually, multiple sales of lower value products.

The jobs problem is being hit by a double whammy

Yes, the real casualty of the BHS crash was the 11,000 employees hit by the sudden loss of their jobs.

They are in a poor position, having to enter a job situation that has been slowly sucked dry over the years.

The problem is that by 2026, 9 million jobs will have been lost to automation. That will not happen all at once, but is happening right now and the effects are being felt greatly.

Even 5 years ago the jobs market was healthier than now.

The 'record job vacancies' level is a false flag, the victim of vacancies being multiply counted as they appear on multiple agency and job sites.

When you scale down a work force 90+%, that was a fair size to start with, that is a real problem for those looking to get employed and quickly.

Many of the jobs that were there 5 years ago just are not now.

A vast swathe of lower end jobs right up to degree level jobs have vanished.

And that is also the problem perpetuated by the out of date education system we have, which is running on an irrelevant sausage machine mentality model.

The jobs they are educating children for now just won't be there by the time they leave school. The technical skills needed to fill the skills gap are unfilled too.

Basic Income Guarantee  will have to take the place of Benefits

Because the jobs won't be out there to fill

The reality is that this creeping automation has been put to one side and not looked at, even though Norbert Wiener identified this situation as being likely over 60 years ago.

The Pick and Pack on-line model of retail is now the way things are going and it is sadly seeing off the High Street players one by one.

Basic Income Guarantee - how society is changing how we will be in the future

Job vacancies counted multiple times are inflating

the actual few vacancies out there -

which are attracting many applicants

What is the future of work? Likely not a place where humans will be. Why?

Automation.

Some fear the rise of the Robots -

They are too late, it's here and taking jobs

We are set to lose 9 million jobs in the next 10 years. The problem is, that in the last 20 years, a combination of recession, cutbacks and automation has taken a big slice off the jobs market. Already, the changing demands of employers has seen a lot of jobs just disappear.

Basic Income Guarantee - That's the truth, Dad!

The workplace is changing, a big swathe of jobs 'in the middle' are going or gone. Unless a robot can't do it, then the job is there, until the job is subsumed into the cybernetic realm.

We will need to be paid for existing, not work

The current job/benefits model is going to have to change. If jobs are not there, then it is pointless to look for the same.

The DWP may offer courses, but they are for work that will likely not be there in the future. With 80,000 of its own staff, what are they going to do all day, play with paperclips when the jobs are not out there to apply for?

The problem is that we have many jobs in the prosperous areas where people cannot afford to live. At present. There is no guarantee that these will endure in these areas.

We also have many jobs gone completely, often to automation, so the base jobs are not there to fill. So the upskilled people move down to jobs they are overqualified to do, displacing the lower qualified and likely more suited to these jobs.

The only answer is Basic Income Guarantee.

Age 50 plus - potential employees - Employers seeing 'millenial' employess as inexperienced.

Employers often fail to appreciate the experience

that older workers have to contribute to the workplace

Many employers are quite stupidly ignoring the decades of life and work skills that older employees can bring to a company.

Whilst we may hear of employees going on well past their retirement age because they like working and the job, they are sadly in the minority.

In the last century to date, people have been looking younger for longer. 60 is no longer seen as old, people who were 60 in 1939 looked 80 plus now. People who are 60 now were in the vanguard of the young once.

Evolution has taken steps and the next one is automation

There is supposedly 'ageism' legislation, but many employers are skirting this issue by looking at identifying pointers to eliminate applications from older people to interview.

They pursue the 'least cost option' of employing the youngest and least qualified, to whom they can pay the least.

They are sadly, missing out on employing people with real skills and experience who could enrich their workplaces.

Part of the 'education' system of recent years has been to 'breed in' a situation of dependency, creating a 'risk averse' and 'hands-off' generation. A generation that has been nannied to and hectored, not encouraged to take reasonable precaution and learn by practical experience.

The health and safety culture has deliberately engineered this dependency to the degree that in some large public establishments and corporations, a simple changing of a light bulb now generates the requirement for a 'professional' to attend a failed lightbulb, put out cones, erect a platform and replace said bulb, whilst charging around £100.00 to do so.

Common sense and a step ladder would have been cheaper and just as safe.

 

The jobs vacuum - where have the jobs all gone, where are the new workers? Automation and cost cutting partly responsible

Supposedly record numbers of jobs available?

Bullshit... here's why not!

We keep getting a tired media mantra of 'record numbers of jobs unfilled.' Well that's not really true.

The reality is that many of the jobs advertised are the same jobs multiple counted, often on many different job websites and agency listings. So the single job may be counted 10 or more times.

On the one hand there may be good news, older generations retiring are create new jobs, if they are advertised and not subsumed into the organisations that previously employed the retiree.

Since WW2, the generations that grew up in the 1950's and 1960's were able to choose family numbers, a no children option was more available from the Mid 1960's and in the 15 year generations of the 1970's, 80's 90's and into the 2000's, we have seen a growing number of couples, married or not, choosing not to have children. So, theoretically, 'new' workers will not be around, except that many migrants have filled that void.

Shrinking industries and changing industries

dictate how we work now and in the future

The legacy of 'choice' has meant that coupled with the mass onslaught of automation and robotics, that whilst a swathe of jobs should have become available through retirement, we have hit a perfect storm where filling 'dead men's shoes' jobs are much the norm.

The speculative employment to meet new growth is not there much anymore, a system of 'job and a half' where job specifications lump on a long list of 'requirements' on the employee, means that the employee will be overworked and be running round from arseholes to breakfast time trying to keep too many plates spinning.

The sum total of this farrago is that the job doesn't get done properly. This least cost option approach produces a mediocre result. Often the same jobs come up time and again because of this overwork.

Another factor is pure the 'least cost option' approach by employers, hiring the most junior and barely qualified people they can pay the least too. As we see, these jobs come up again and again because the employer did not employ the best candidate, only the cheapest.

The jobs vacuum has come from the perfect storm. Automation has taken many jobs and in the UK will take 9 million out of the workplace in the next 10 years. Your last 5 purchases were likely done on a computerised device, not in person.

Extrapolate that out over a week, month or year and that is where the jobs have gone from, the middle level of employees. That said, we now have machines that can learn and write, so SEO writing jobs and web optimisation will soon go to those too.

The 'new' workers are mainly the so-called millennial generation and a rare and becoming rarer commodity as further childlessness pervades.

The future to come is proxy living. The human in the workplace is already becoming irrelevant!

Unless you have transferable skills and skills that a robot doesn't currently have.