Milton Hershey was a visionary like Walt Disney who actually created what Disney never lived to create –a true “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” (EPCOT). He established his community with both his factory and a town where his employees owned their homes. Plus, by putting his plant in the middle of dairy farms, he not only secured a reliable source of milk for his milk chocolate, but also saved the bucolic surroundings for miles around. When he died he left his remaining company stock to an industrial school for orphans designed to give them employable skills. Everything he did ended up helping his business prosper, while helping the people who made it possible: employees and suppliers. (I urge you to visit the Hershey Theme Park).
Harris Rosen is perhaps the ideal Free MarketEEr in that he feels that if you help your employees, you help yourself: “when efforts are combined towards the greater good, everyone will benefit”. Examples:
– He established day care centers for his employees, and college scholarships as well in an under-served community. This combination produced more reliable, productive employees.
– He funded a School of Hospitality which provides quality employees for area hotels including his own.
– He provides health care through a clinic on hotel property which provides the best of care at a far lower cost. -Rosen’s most enduring contribution to business is that his “giving” is always tested for effectiveness ie., has it indeed, made the recipients’ lives better. This market based giving is the most effective giving by far.
Joel Stern of Stern Value Management developed a way of compensating employees from the “executive suite” to the “shop floor”, which dramatically improved productivity and employee income. His methods even made the United States Postal Service profitable for a brief time in the 1990s. His system of employee compensation – “Economic Value Added”, or “EVA” has been utilized by companies all around the world. Details on EVA can be obtained by contacting me at MartyCumminsLaw@yahoo.com. I will forward your interest to Martin Schwarz of Stern Value Management.
Upon Email request, we will send more details on the above as well as stories of others such as: Jean Valjean the heroic entrepreneur at the heart of Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES (“The innovator had grown rich, which is good and had spread prosperity around him, which is better”), Robert Owen, the 18th Century Enlightened Industrialist, who produced the best products by treating his employees well, James J. Hill, the railroad builder who funded businesses all along his rail line, Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald who established thousands of schools for ex-slaves and advocated business as the way to freedom, and Muhammed Yunnus, the “Micro-Credit” lender who has funded thousands of small businesses in the 3rd world. Plus we will tell the stories of Joseph Rountree, George Cadbury, and George F. Johnson and others.