Need Assessment at Wegmans

     Wegmans is the mecca of grocery stores. The store specializes in delivering a wide selection of high quality goods at low prices. It is a family-owned U.S. regional supermarket chain with more than 75 stores spread across the mid-atlantic region with 38,000 employees.  Wegmans was cited in Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” #3 and Business week ranked Wegmans #5 in its list of customer service providers in the U.S.  Wegmans is known for several of its training and development programs, celebrity events and in-house cooking schools including its mandatory new hire orientation program called “Living Who We Are Orientation” with a visit from the CEO and President, human resource team, management team and the Wegmans Employee Training.  Hypothetically, please find a scenario that provoked Wegmans to conduct a need assessment to see if current training needed to be redesigned or if an increase in staff is necessary.

     In 2009, the company made 5.15 billion in profit and that number increased every year since by margins.  In order to continue to grow and maintain the company motto “Everyday you get our best” the overnight team plays a huge part in making sure the store is properly stocked and looking its best daily. The increase of product/shipment trucks has proven to challenge the team and the current methods of stocking and merchandise training.  The team has not been successful at completing the shipments with lots of merchandise left in the stockroom at the close of the night shift.  This would leave work for the day stock team or little room for the new shipment the next evening.  Based on the current floor plan and larger shipments of existing and new products, Wegmans asked its best performers (managers, team leads, daytime stock employees, delivery truck personnel and overnight stock employees) to participate in focus groups. The focus groups were asked the following questions:

What role do you play at Wegmans?

Do you think the current stocking procedures are working?

What can be done to improve the flow of the stocking procedures at Wegmans?

What ways can Wegmans support the overnight stock employee/team in order for them to perform their job?

     From the focus groups, many tasks were identified to support the overnight stock team in order to perform their job.  The tasks identified were ranked according to the level of importance for examples: safety training, floor plan exercises, merchandise locations/aisle location training and many other tasks that were crucial for supporting overnight stock employees in their first year on the job. In order to address the tasks, new-hire training was developed just for the day and night stocking team employees. It included self-paced online modules and hands-on classroom safety and equipment training.  In this scenario, it was crucial to support the job of the overnight team member.  Therefore, based on the tasks that are important and frequently performed, training should be provided.  Noe stated in the reading (2010), “training is likely the best solution to a performance problem if employees don’t know how to perform” (p. 132).

Reference:
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill