A family-run Publix Grocery Store is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, aren’t they? They might be the formula for helping to win the war on employee engagement and build an excellent Publix culture backbone.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. An awesome quote by Maya Angelou.
Creative employees do remarkable work because they seek to complete something, to heal something, to change something for the better. To move from where they are now to a more centered, more complete place. You don’t get creative once everything is okay. In fact, we are creative because everything isn’t okay (yet).
According to Scarlett Surveys, “Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues, and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work”.
Only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. That fact is surprising to us. These employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. People are actively engaged and help move the organization forward.
88% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 38% of the disengaged. 72% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the disengaged.
Engaged employees feel a strong emotional bond with the organization that employs them. They are people demonstrating a willingness to recommend the organization to others and commit time and effort to help the team succeed.
People are motivated by intrinsic factors. These are personal growth, working to a common purpose, and being part of a larger process. They are not focused on extrinsic factors.
Passing through Publix’s sliding doors to escape the blistering Merritt Island, Fla. heat is a welcome relief, but it isn’t just the air-conditioning that jumps out at you. As you walk the aisles, bag boys and clerks in sage-green shirts and black aprons routinely smile and ask questions: “How are you today? Can we help you with anything?”
If a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. What happens is an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do.
At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot.
What engages employees?
Publix grocery store … so what engages its employees?
The drivers differ regionally as well as person to person, but employee engagement is largely about social connections happening within the organization.
But there are factors unique to certain winning businesses have in common. Let’s examine those that make Publix a winner in employee engagement:
Employee-owned business
Publix is the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers, and bakers into the company’s largest corporate shareholders.
All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation.)
Publix employees (and former employees) are the controlling shareholders, with an 80% stake, worth $16.6 billion. Surprisingly none of them belongs to a union.
The Publix compensation grants shares of a store-specific bonus pool every 13 weeks. The exact amount varies, but typically 20% of quarterly profits go into that larger pool; 20% of the pool is then paid out in cash to the store’s employees.
When competition opens up across the street and sales are impacted. Employees are incented to make sure they’re doing everything they can to serve that customer to the best of their ability.
Commitment to open, honest communication
Communication is core to the Publix culture and employee engagement. Employees understand the why behind their jobs – what they’re expected to achieve and how it impacts the relationships with its customer.
Collaboration is highly valued, and Publix teams communicate to get projects accomplished. They strive to learn what is working well in other stores.
Employees are encouraged to develop professional goals and connect with colleagues, contributing to growth in all jobs. This demonstrates to all employees there’s a long-term future.
Publix almost exclusively promotes from within, and every store displays advancement charts showing the path each employee can take to become a manager. Fifty-eight thousand of the company’s 159,000 employees have officially registered their interest in advancement.
Associates rotate through various divisions, from grocery to real estate to distribution. This gives them a broad sense of business. A former cake decorator in a store bakery is now in charge of all strategy for its bakeries. A distribution center manager overseeing 800 associates got his start unloading railcars. 34,000 employees have more than ten years of tenure.
Publix grocery store … branding with organization stories
Publix has an excellent reputation for outstanding employment branding. Being fast, fun, and friendly is part of Publix employees’ DNA. It creates an image of an innovative and fun place to work.
A strong employment brand image offers clarity on the Publix culture and what it stands for. This ensures the right people are attracted to the organization and the wrong people apply elsewhere.
The right engagement practices ensure understanding the most meaningful motivators to a company’s employees.
Committing to an intentional culture like Publix, one that’s open, transparent, and enables employees to thrive is a very smart investment. Your employees are your business. The better they are, the better your business.
The bottom line
When considering why employee engagement has become a key differentiator, the answer is right in our faces: We all have busy lives; we’re all pulled in multiple directions all day long. Given an alternative, does anyone want less engagement or to spend more time on their to-do list?
This idea isn’t really new. Corner markets and convenience stores aren’t just competing with the big-box superstores, they flourish. Why? The reason is in their names: They’re right where their customers are, and they’re convenient. They don’t usually have lines, and they don’t have aisles and aisles of choices to sift through.
Publix gets it and as a result, is winning the war of employee engagement.
If you are looking for additional resources in customer engagement, one of my favorite experts is Bill Quiseng. You’ll find lots of good stories and examples tolearn from his blog.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Influence Consumer Behavior Through Personalization Strategies
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
