When it comes to entrepreneurship, companies always have to prioritize what is the most important thing and what’s next. Usually, this question comes up; Should we think about customers first or employees first?

According to this article, it doesn’t matter if they focus on customers or employees as long as they are moving deliberately in either one of these directions. It also talks about how to be more customer-focused in four different ways. I agree that it does not matter which comes first as long as companies consider both at the end. However, I believe that employee-focused companies are more successful than the customer-focused companies. Every company has to think about customers since that is where the profit comes from, and when the company fails to get customers, it goes bankrupt. But companies do not always need to think about their employees in order to earn profits. I believe that those companies who focus on employees before customers are more ethically considerate about their stakeholders. Employees are the people a company has to work closely to every single day, and if the company cannot even take good care of them, there is no way that they can take good care of customers.

Oracle is one of successful companies that are employee-focused. They promote a culture of health in the workplace, and by doing so, it translates into caring about the health and well-being of their members and customers. The benefits of being an employee-focused company includes; good reputation, stronger trust and loyalty from employees to the company and motivated work environment.

From these points, I believe that companies that are employee-focused are more successful in creating a good business environment and attracting customers than those that are customer-focused.

Article: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/11/05/whether-you-put-customers-or-employees-first-doesnt-matter/

Other sources:

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/profit/archives/opinion/041111-bmagusin-359275.html

The blog written by Sarah Dillard and Vanessa Lipschitz shows the research on how female CEOs got their positions. From the research, they figure out that it is not the degree from famous universities or the most prestigious jobs that made them reach the top but a company where you can find a potential to climb up. I found this blog very interesting, because I used to think that graduating from a good university and getting MBA are essential in order for women to get to the top, so this research was quite surprising for me. I found that finding a good environment in a workplace that motivates you to work hard is more important than getting degrees.

However, I still think there is an inequality between men and women. The fact that long stint for women is over 50% longer than for men shows that there is still a difference in how a company treats men and women. I believe that it takes longer for women to gain the trust since some people still consider women as inferior to men and think that men are more suitable for leaders. It is unfair that it is harder to women to get into leader positions, however, I think this inequality is going to disappear in the near future. More and more women are getting university level of education and going into workforce after graduating. The traditional way of viewing women is vanishing as more people are becoming aware that women have as much potential as men do.

Through this blog, I learned that there is a great chance for women to climb up to the top although it might be harder than men. What I found through this blog made me excited to start working after graduating a university and gave me a reason and motivation to work harder.

Blog URL: https://hbr.org/2014/11/research-how-female-ceos-actually-get-to-the-top

In Yuuki Miyagawa’s blog post, he talks about how it is unethical for companies to cut off working hours in order to increase the profitability. I agree that the reduction in hours and increase in part-time jobs would affect some people’s lives enormously in a negative way especially those whose livings depend on earnings from their jobs. It is important for companies to increase its profitability in order to keep the business going, however, it is not the only thing they have to consider when running business. They have to clearly identify who their stakeholders are and make sure that they are all satisfied with what a company does and their treatment. When a company fails to respond to their stakeholders’ needs, it can lead the company to go bankrupt.

Instead of reducing work hours, I believe companies can take other methods to reduce costs and increase profitability without being unethical. One example would be training employees from the beginning as it would make production process faster and workforce more efficient which result in the increase of productivity. Another idea would be improving technology which would also help companies to increase productivity hence its profitability. Improvement in technology also reduces labour costs as companies will not need to hire as many people as before.

For these points, I strongly believe that it is important that companies make sure that what they are doing is not unethical and does not have negative impact on any of their stakeholders when trying to gain more profits. This is also part of their responsibilities when running a business.

URL of the blog post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/yuukimiyagawa/2014/10/05/part-time-jobs-and-the-costs/

In Brendan Lancaster’s blog post “Staying fit in the workplace” talks about placing things as far away from the desks as possible so that employees move around the office and it eventually keeps them fit. I agree with what he said at the beginning that it is difficult to find time to work out when you are busy with your work. I myself feel the same way after I came to UBC. I need to be very motivated in order to make myself go to gym. I also agree that this strategy would encourage me to stay active and not to sit for the whole day.

However, I think this strategy can also be controversial as some people might find this idea inconvenient and inefficient. It would be annoying to get up every time to just get things like staplers and calculators especially when you are in a great hurry. Also, I do not think this would work well in a long term as many people would start finding this inconvenient and they would stop putting things back to the original place and just keep them close to their desks. In order to encourage employees to stay active in a long term, companies should come up with other plans such as mandatory free workout sessions every week. In doing so, it would force employees to work out frequently and stay fit. I myself would love to work in a company that offers service like that in the future.

URL to the blog post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/blancaster/2014/11/08/staying-fit-in-the-workplace/

This article states that Tim Hortons might need to higher the price of coffee due to the price hike of beans. This would definitely have a negative impact on the company and eventually lead to a decrease in profits. I found this article interesting because Tim Hortons is a local company that has a strong customer loyalty among Canada and I personally use it very often. I like Tim Hortons better than Starbucks and other coffee shops because they offer products that are comparatively affordable and inexpensive for its quality. I believe many people feel the same way as me. Tim Hortons currently uses cost leadership strategy (low cost producer in an industry) to gain its profitability and attractiveness, however, this might change if the price of coffee gets higher. I believe that this price hike would be a real pain for them as it would make their products less attractive to customers, hence less customers buy their products. In order for them to keep customers and profitability, I believe that changing their strategy from cost leadership to differentiation would be the best as it is now hard to keep the products low cost. If they have products that are different from other competitors which customers are willing to pay more for, this price hike would not be such a big deal. I think Iced Capp is a great example as no other companies have the similar products and customers like it not because of its price but its uniqueness. They should offer more products like Iced Capp in order to differentiate from others and keep customers despite the price hike. From this article, I found that in some inevitable situations, companies would have to reconsider their business strategy and shift it if necessary.

Article URL: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-exec-hints-coffee-price-hike-may-be-needed-1.2824752