Brenda Ross-O’Toole and Judy McCarthy offered – and I’m being honest – a heartwarming talk about a grocery store. Well, it’s not really a grocery but a cultural phenomenon.

My live notes… 

• Mr. Wegman donated money to a local university – the Wegman’s
  School of Pharmacy will ultimately address the national shortage in pharmacists. SMART!
• Continue to build 2-3 new stores each year with 600-800 people per store.
• Wegmans wants employees to be SME for all products – changes the requirements of the labor force
• 30000 employees with 2000 at corporate; different state issues, ages of hires, reasons for employment
• Success is about using the workforce more effectively
• Understanding how long it takes someone to get up to speed from one job to another – also drives succession planning
• Help restructuring business units – any time there’s a business change, WP is involved
• Programs to grow people into jobs, e.g., Wegman’s Culinary Institute trains chefs who will work in Wegmans’ restaurants
• Rely heavily on high school students and keeps them exceptionally engaged; Wegman’s philosophy enables them to work Wegmans into their schedules
• Have changed structures but never had a layoff
• Judy’s daughter, a high school student, works at Wegmans in her hometown and had to take several courses including a vegetable identification class – cool]
• After being named to Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For, saw a 50% spike in resume submissions
• Conduct heavy demographic research prior to a new store to fully understand the labor pool (Judy: “The book is THIS big.”)
• Someone commented that the reason there are few Wal-Mart’s in Western New York is that they’re afraid of Wegman’s (slight applause – oh please); Brenda noted that the customer demographics are different and backed it up
• The boomerang effect – leaving and coming back – has happened (remember Erma Bombeck? She wrote a great book, “The Grass is Greener Over the Septic Tank” – how true, how true)
• “There really aren’t lots in people in HR who like to analyze data”
• Developing a Workforce Plan requires collaboration with many internal organizations

And a presentation of a business case that demonstrated all of the above and more…

My thoughts…

Great stuff especially the reliance on in-depth local economic data as a key driver of workforce planning and an incredible belief in an understanding the needs of their employees while maintaining Wegmans high business standards – even to the point of modifying existing or creating new structures to enable specific employee groups to achieve personal and professional goals…

Spoke with ERE’s Thursday Keynote Speaker, Dr. Tim Butler of Harvard after his morning talk. Maslow lives!

“The Art of Retaining Your Best People” revolved around identifying an organization’s most valued employee(s) and understanding the elements of their most imbedded motivations to be committed to an organization. In a nutshell, recruiters are just at the tip of the career development iceberg in most organizations.

One interesting claim by
Butler is that in companies who do “get it”, the leaders recognize that people who leave are often those whom the company may do business with in the future. As a result, it is vitally important to have maintained a strong nexus between the employee and their career development goals. Not brain surgery but consider how many companies “write off” someone who leaves without realizing that the exiting employee may experience substantial personal and professional growth – and come back to haunt everyone who spoke negatively of them.

Consider the plight of employees today… They’re asking themselves: Who really cares for me? How many times have I sat with someone and had a talk about me? How does a recruiter propose to sell an organization to a candidate only for the candidate to discover that the reality of engagement is at most a once a year performance review – probably a bad one – with their manager.

I asked Tim what questions would he have enjoyed asking the audience.

• Where do you see yourself in 3-4 years and is your company going to help you get there?
• Does your company have a fully developed career development program for most employees with fully engaged managers?
• Do you talk about career development in your company to people you recruit?

Finally, what did Tim hope recruiters would take away with them? 

• For one, there’s a substantial personal element for each recruiter – after all, they are involved in the equation of career development of all hires.
• Two, that recruiters should be actively connected with the career development and be part of the discussions.
• Three, that recruiters are the sales reps behind the organization’s human capital improvement initiatives.

“John Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, he is able to see the world as it really is: people being bombarded by media and government with messages like ‘Stay Asleep’, ‘No Imagination’, ‘Submit to Authority’. Even scarier is that he is able to see that some usually normal-looking people are in fact ugly aliens in charge of the massive campaign to keep humans subdued.”

“Anita Job, a down-on-her-luck corporate analyst, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, she is able to see the recruiting profession as it really is: Candidates being bombarded by ad firms and dot job sites with messages like ‘Stay away from Agency Recruiters’, ‘Corporate Recruiters are Low-skilled Dumbasses’, ‘Submit Your Resume Only to Organizations Using Taleo’. Even scarier is that she is able to see that some usually normal-looking recruiters are in fact ugly aliens in charge of a massive campaign to keep candidates and hiring managers befuddled.”