Wegmans Food Market

Wegmans Food Market is a privately held U.S. regional supermarket with 86 stores in the mid-Atlantic region of the country and more than 44,000 employees. This grocery store is known for creating a shopping experience like no other. One way the company accomplishes this is by being an employer like no other. Wegmans Food Market has been highly ranked on Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" every year since the list was started in 1998, and was #7 in 2015. Indeed, Wegmans employees enjoy high levels of job satisfaction and are overwhelmingly committed to their employer.

In this exercise, please read the mini-case and answer the questions that follow.

Imagine being excited to go to the grocery store.

Shopping at Wegmans, a privately owned chain of 86 grocery stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts, is viewed as a fun event. Wegmans understands that successful grocery stores must combat a sobering statistic: 84 percent of consumers believe that all grocery stores are alike. Why travel an extra two blocks to go to a different store?

Wegmans has created its own unique identity by offering more of virtually everything, including 500 varieties of cheese, bookstores, child play centers, and dry cleaners on-site. It also stops at nothing to make customers happy, including sending a chef to a customer’s home to correct a food order mistake or cooking a family’s Thanksgiving turkey at the store because Mom bought one that was too big for her oven.

Wegmans creates a shopping experience like no other by being an employer like no other. Wegmans has been highly listed on Fortune's “100 Best Companies to Work For” since the list began in 1998, was #1 in 2005 and, most recently, #7 in 2015. The smiles customers see on the faces of employees at Wegmans are not forced or rehearsed. What makes these employees so satisfied? They make good money, with hourly wages and annual salaries that range toward the high end of the grocery store industry. Wegmans also has shelled out $54 million for college scholarships to full- and part-time employees during the past 20 years and offers profit sharing and medical coverage to its employees. Such employee-friendly policies have resulted in higher labor costs; Wegmans’ labor costs run around 16 percent of sales versus 12 percent for its competitors. However, Wegmans enjoys a 6 percent turnover rate instead of the 19 percent rate of competitors, and 20 percent of its employees now have 10 or more years of service. As former Chairman Robert Wegman put it, “I have never given away more than I got back.”

The satisfaction felt by Wegmans’ employees goes beyond pay and benefits, however. The company looks to hire people who have a passion for food and a genuine interest in culinary products, even to the extent that it passes over qualified candidates who lack such feelings. The company sent one of its cheese managers on a 10-day trip through London, Paris, and Italy to learn more about the cheeses Wegmans might offer. Wegmans’ employees also have the freedom to do whatever it takes to make a customer happy or improve the store, without having to check with higher-ups. One Wegmans operations chief even noted, only half-jokingly, “We’re a $3 billion company run by 16-year-old cashiers.” The end result of these philosophies is that employees view their work as very meaningful, with jobs at Wegmans described as “a badge of honor” or “part of the social fabric.”

1A. Many employees are highly satisfied ...

Many employees are highly satisfied at Wegmans because they want more culinary knowledge and the company provides that to them, illustrating what job satisfaction theory?

Affective events theory

Value-percept theory

Growth need theory

Job characteristics theory

Mood theory

1B. Employees of Wegmans get high job satisfaction ...

Employees of Wegmans get high job satisfaction because they make a difference in customers' lives by helping grocery shopping be informative and enjoyable, indicating what critical psychological state?

Increasing skill sets

Knowledge of results

Responsibility for outcomes

Meaningfulness

Growth need strength

1C. Seeing a customer's needs met gives ...

Seeing a customer's needs met gives Wegmans employees higher job satisfaction because they are able to make decisions on the spot without asking managers for permission, indicating what core job characteristic is a part of their jobs?

Task significance

Task identity

Autonomy

Task variety

1D. The Wegmans employee who toured London...

The Wegmans employee who toured London, Paris, and Italy was able to select cheeses and then see the cheeses displayed in the store and ultimately enjoyed by the customer. Seeing this chain of events can lead to high job satisfaction based on

feedback.

task variety.

task identity.

task significance.

autonomy.