Realizing potential
While good communication is a must for any company that
wants motivated employees and a successful culture, you can’t
stop there. You also have to reward employees for realizing
their potential and helping the company grow.
One of the first lessons Spires learned in business was that
people want to feel like they matter.
“People need to feel attached to the company they work for,”
she says. “They need to know that there is an importance to
what they do.
“It’s something I experienced firsthand when I was just
starting out. My store director, when I started working in this
business, he had this ability to make me feel that this company wouldn’t run if I wasn’t here to do my job — and I was a
part-timer. I knew how much money I made in an hour, but
that wasn’t the thing that made me fall in love with the business. It was how he made me feel about my job and my worth
to the company. That’s something I firmly believe in.”
Spires tries to make people feel like they matter by doing
things like handing out service recognition cards, which are
handed out to high performers on the spot. She recognizes
achievements on her weekly organizational broadcast. Stores
that reach organizational benchmarks receive a storewide
employee lunch.
But she says the tokens of gratitude and pats on the back
don’t tell the whole story. Truly rewarding a high achiever
means giving that person a chance to grow within the company.
Spires has helped launch a career fair program aimed at
allowing the talents of her employees to blossom before they
have a chance to work elsewhere.
In July, Acme invited more than 100 employees to one such
fair.
“Having people do things they’re interested in, it just makes a
world of difference,” she says. “Finding a cashier who is a high
school art student and would really like to be a cake decorator,
that makes all the difference, as opposed to finding someone
from the outside and hiring them as a cake decorator.
“It all starts at that basic level, asking people, ‘What interest
do you have in this company?’ or finding out what department
they’d like to work in. People need to know what opportunities
you have for them as they move up the ladder. That’s where we
really start to get tremendous success stories from our people.
It all goes back to one of our main goals of making this the best
place to work.”
HOW TO REACH: Acme Markets Inc., www.acmemarkets.com