Many of us have heard/know about the new "Winning in Each Store" program that some brilliant bigshot a Kroger corporate was paid a gross amount of money to come up with. Well for the store I'm at, the focus department is produce because the produce isn't fresh or full enough according to the customer receipt tracker. Today, one of the co-managers came to me and asked me to help out in produce. I agreed, and I, along with two of the co-managers joined two of the produce employees and went to work stocking the produce department. That means there was five of us working to fill holes, conditioning and checking for freshness. You know what? A lot got done. The department was a mess and I hope the co-managers scold/punish the produce department head for leaving the department in such sorry shape. He and his morning crew did a horrible job.
I talked with one of the co-managers and asked her if she believed this program could succeed. She thinks so, but only if "lessons are learned" so that when the produce department is no longer the focus department, its scores will never be as low again because the employees will have a better sense of what the customers expect from the department. I wanted to say to her that the employees really don't care and that they'll happily take the help, but once the extra help is gone, it will be back to same old same old in that department. If you want your employees to be efficient and care, you have to pay more and a long with that increased pay, expect better results. If you want a nice looking department that scores well, you have to staff that department properly. Part of our produce department's problem is a lack of staffing (up until lately, one guy in produce would be by himself from 6:00PM to 10:00PM, and he'd often be called to the front to check), but the other part of the problem is the people working just aren't efficient enough at what they do.
What is going to happen when I'm not there along with two co-managers to help out the department? Things won't get better, that's for sure. If Kroger really wanted to improve departments, then first, the current help needs to be evaluated. Find out who's competent, reliable and efficient and who's not. Secondly, pay the good help better so that the good help stays with the company and works hard to keep their jobs. Thirdly, listen to your good help. If they say the department is short-staffed, add the help that's needed, but then check and make sure that the added help is really making a positive difference and is truly necessary. That's how you win in each store. That's how you win the customers. That's how you win the employees. This all, in theory, should mean better sales, which in turn means better market share, and also, less headaches and problems in individual stores, so everything runs smoother. Yes, you're paying out more money to your employees, but you should also make more money too because customer satisfaction will go up.
Can't wait until this idiotic new program falls flat and fails big time because as of now, it's nothing but a waste of time.
-- Edited by GenesisOne on Monday 20th of May 2013 11:29:57 PM
-- Edited by GenesisOne on Monday 20th of May 2013 11:30:55 PM
funny how you mention the bit about " with that increased pay, expect better results " yet here is kroger lowering pay and hours yet expecting the world of their employees. it's like saying to a mcdonalds crew that, even though theyre paid min. wage and have time constraints and not enough people, they need to make everything look exactly like on the commercials. its never gonna happen. what results? kroger advertising all these things about high quality and customer service, but in reality it's not.
I understand the key concepts of 'winning each store', but it will ultimately fail in the end.The reason behind poor produce is for a number of reasons, but I will kindly point them out in each category respectifully.
[1] Warehouse Over Bought The one thing that can hurt quality and freshness is an overbought warehouse and unfortunately for me the warehouse is always overbought or hung on product. Prehaps if they would survey before an the next sale is out could help improve the freshness by ordering to match the ad.
[2] Store Level Over Bought It happens from time to time, but something that seems like a great sale in the end didn't sell exactly what you had expected. This impacts quality and freshness, but its typical for human error as we are only human.
[3] Understaffed If the quality of produce is poor there are a number of reasons why this is happening. Most of the stores i've been at are understaffed by nearly 40 - 60 hours per department. Its always being pushed towards the front end especially produce or dairy. This and a combination of low paid low wage individuals who have no motivation because theres no career to move up will cause failure.
[4] Temporary Bandage Trying to use a band-aid on a gushing wound won't solve any problems in the long run. The department of choice isn't going to be the focus forever and when you have other departments focusing on this and not their own they too will become the 'focus' in the near future as well. Its just a constant cycle of trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.
My solution:
RAISE YOUR ENTRY-LEVEL pay to at least $9 or $10 / hr for some QUALITY help. Increase ELMS hours in each department by about 40 - 60 hours per week and this will essentially eliminate the need for Overtime. In ELMS there should be a set of hours specifically designed for surge checking.
__________________
My Views and Opinions do not reflect that of the Kroger company. I'm an indivdual expressing my 1st amendment right.
At my store, no one on the front end does it. I would be surprised if anyone else from the other departments did it.
No one enforces it. It's one of those things that's mentioned once, and never again after.
If I thought that more highly of my managers, I would think that they deliberately weren't enforcing it because of the potential of interfering with Quevision.
Go take a look at the gift / prizes they are offering when you redeem your WIS coupons. Its a joke. A bunch of crap from China.
Anyway, about higher pay amounts to higher work expectation. This is what I refer to the "chopping block theory". Pay more -- you chop faster. Pay less -- you chop slower. Its that simple.
__________________
I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
We just recently got our focus department changed, it was meat, now it's produce.
No one really follows it though. I don't even know how bakery is supposed to help but when it was meat dept. we were supposed to do tie ins... the only tie in I can possibly think of now would be strawberries to go with angel food cakes? But no one's going to bother.
It won't matter if it "fails". Management will say it was a success. It never fails. New management comes in to clean things up from the old management.............new management comes in to clean up for the old management. Wow is right
I am not a fan of the "winning in stores" program either. Our focus dept is meat. I work in produce and we were "assigned" to face part of the lunch meat area and check for short dates. I have yet to volunteer my time to go help them. Their department consists of 2-3 clerks w/ about 65yrs of time in w/ Kroger. They should know how to run their department.
Are they under a separate contract and a different local? What state do you reside?
-- Edited by AnonymousCutter on Wednesday 22nd of May 2013 10:50:41 PM
__________________
My Views and Opinions do not reflect that of the Kroger company. I'm an indivdual expressing my 1st amendment right.
I am not a fan of the "winning in stores" program either. Our focus dept is meat. I work in produce and we were "assigned" to face part of the lunch meat area and check for short dates. I have yet to volunteer my time to go help them. Their department consists of 2-3 clerks w/ about 65yrs of time in w/ Kroger. They should know how to run their department.
See, everything said here makes sense. Every time Kroger rolls out something new like this program, it ends up making absolutely no sense. Corporate is never going to get a clue, it seems. I think every time corporate tries to ram something like this down our throats, the employees somehow manage to care even less than before and productivity is negatively impacted because the employees just get more and more annoyed and fed up with more and more work being unloaded on them without an increase in pay to go along with the extra work. I feel the same way as others now - I'm just going to do the bare minimum and that's it. Kroger makes it extremely hard to care.
apparently there are prizes employees can get if they earn these Win bucks or whatever. For doing something good, you might receive one of them. Save them up and u can cash them in for a bunch of crap. Kinda remind me of what they do at my kids school. Who thinks up this sh*t? So yea go look at the stuff they are giving out. its pathetic
__________________
I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
Here is a better why to run the program. Look at sales, Osat scores, get input from store management and come up with a focus dept. Give that dept 10% more hours every week than usual and really stay on them with out of stocks and osat scores. And so on and so forth.
How come every focus dept is meat? hmmmmmm here are what people are saying about the meat dept (You've discontinued my item now I have to go to another store to get them) I have this problem all the time customers ask for something that's been "disco".. they say did you discontinued it or did that company.......I say I don't know our company doesn't tell us...........well the customer says........I know I know I'm sorry I wasn't my decision........the customer says can YOU talk to your bosses about getting it back........ma'am, or sir I've tried this before and they won't call 1800kroger........... customer says why should I have to call.........I know know I'm very very very very sorry but our company won't listen to us but they will listen to you. And so on and so forth.
Produce/Frozen/Dairy employees come in at 6 am 7 am...........Meat comes in at 8 am and 9 am and our truck is sitting in the cutting room for us to have to unload, if we are lucky the 19 year old kids at night filled something up and didn't do an 8 hour clean up job......you see where I'm going with this
Maybe if management had some common sense they would see that it's not the single depts set up, but how all the depts are set up as a whole
I hear yah on all that . And agree 1000x over. Corporate office looks at sales times not prep times and doesn't factor in the time it takes to unload trucks, stock shelves and wait on the customers but they want to bump hours around and put people where they feel the busiest times are . If they actually spent a week in each department at the first of the month maybe they would actually get an Idea of what it takes its not all about the sales its about what leads up to the sales. And then you have the lazy dept managers who go up to the office for hours at a time and play on their iphones, ipads and check their emails and get on facebook oh and cant forget their many trips almost on a daily basis to get their groceries on the clock while putting the work that they are suppose to be doing on the other employees. That's a great management training system that we have at Kroger. Screw around steal time and get away with it. because you have a black badge makes me want to be a manager not I would rather earn my money instead of having other people earn it for me and me take the credit.
That's just fine, though, as everybody has given up on Winning in Each Store.
Yeah, we don't have that it either...
Something else that we don't have either is a little something called "improvement" in our focus department. Even management has pretty much given up on doing what is supposedly needed to be done every day in that department to boost customer satisfaction because what's been done hasn't worked and is not going to magically start working, either. Oh well, I'm sure the all-knowing corporate genius responsible for the program got a nice bonus out of its creation anyway, so it's not like nobody benefited from it.
