Plugging the Brain Drain and other ideas

Plugging the Brain Drain and other ideas


As the age of quality and knowledgeable workers leave the work force, many companies will have to come up with unique ideas to bring in workers to fill the gap. Many problems such as things that only hands on training can teach will need to be retrained for new workers. Some companies will need to come up with a plan and outline the potential problems each of their own unique business need. Each company will have different problems such as a brewery that makes beer, the loss of key or knowledgeable employees could cause them to close down. Or a company that produces computer software may not get software to market on time costing them money and perhaps even being falling behind.

As a human resource manager coming up with plans to stop or slow the loss of key employees would be a great challenge. One plan may be to look into H1B1 visa workers with experience and the willingness to relocate. Finding out the current laws that apply to immigration for such workers would be a must along with thorough background checks for each potential employee.
Another method may be to give out incentives to retain older employees to keep them from retiring. Incentives such as fewer work hours a week, raises, or promotions may keep some employees from retiring until newer employees can be trained with the hands on knowledge needed.

The company Nordstrom took such drastic steps to modernize it-self and stay competitive because taking its well known brand online would bring in new customers and give older customers more ways to shop. Many risks could come from creating proprietary software and going online. Using a more main stream approach such as Facebook would give them a layer of deniability if they lost customer data, and it became public. Also it would be much cheaper to combine free social media with phone and computer apps. Other possible problems would be keeping the products online current with new products and prices. A wrongly typed or out dated priced item on their site could hurt their relationship with their customers.

Sales will no doubt improve with a solid built product and the right ad campaign. Age demographics would also be younger adding new generations of consumers to an already solid brand.

Nordstrom’s philosophy is what has caused them to last as long as they have. Their building a loyal customer base with great apparel, and staying with the current trends have made them a leader in their business. Many people and companies could learn from such a philosophy of taking care of the customer and staying current to stay competitive.

I think that Agassi’s from Nordstrom Idea could work if marketed right. The idea of electric cars is very real at the moment unlike the past, what makes his idea different then others is the idea of swapping out the battery instead of a long wait to recharge. If he can convince enough people to buy his car and have enough stations set up to swap out the battery when needed then it could work very well. The problem seems to me much like the old Beta Max vs. VCR debate enough people have to buy into a product to make it work no matter how good it looks on paper.

The main challenges faced to convince people to offshore their products would be loss of customers, being seen as a sellout, possible bad press if USA workers lost jobs because of the move, and the challenge to convince people the product is of the same quality. Loss of some customers may happen but by keeping the prices reasonable and moving the brand national new customers will take their place and the company will grow. Being seen as a sellout by locals who may have bought the product because it was made in America may be lost. But as in the first problem they will be replaced as the company grows national. Keeping all the employees with no layoffs and go back to build on demand model the way they began could work for specialty items. Use marketing to show managers in china looking at the quality assurance of each bag will go a long way in convincing people the product is being quality produced.

Much as in the last question many of the arguments would be the same such as loss of customers, being seen as a sellout, possible bad press if USA workers lost jobs because of the move, and the challenge to convince people the product is of the same quality. The social responsibility of not moving overseas would have real cost of not being competitive and possibly going bankrupt with everyone loosing. This is a problem that is faced by many companies today who have managed their overseas involvement with the proper social responsibility.


Nordstrom's Making quality bags the customers buy does create jobs for shipping and selling the product and also produces sales tax that would help the local economy. If the company had went broke because they did not move overseas then all the jobs they created and local sales tax would have been lost.








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