Finding Motivators for the Modern day Grocery Store Employee

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Grocery store employees are faced with many challenges, such as standing up their entire shift, lifting heavy objects, dealing with sometimes irritable customers appropriately and taking care of monotonous tasks. The biggest challenge of all is the low, often minimum wage salaries that make life at home difficult and a struggle for the average grocery cashier, baker, and stock person. Since grocery store employees work conditions can be draining and receive little pay the turnover rates are astronomically high. Because of such low pay available, grocery chains need to motivate employees with benefits they could not find elsewhere. One of the major chain grocery stores trying to combat this issue is Publix Super Markets.
Publix Super Markets main objective goes along the lines of becoming the “premier quality food retailer in the world” and they have gone about achieving that goal by focusing on giving the utmost service to its patrons and by building a lifelong relationship with its employees. They have been on the FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” every year since 1998, which is not an easy accomplishment. Slowly they have grown their consumer base and presently own and operate over a thousand stores, include their own distribution centers. The key to success has been to never knowingly disappoint their customer, along with giving back to the community and keeping employees gratified (Publix Asset Management Company, 2014).
Publix recognizes that in order to gain happy customers that will exclusively shop there for many years, they first have to make sure that those who directly interact with them are positive affective people. Publix holds a diverse workforce environment consisting of 48% women and 38% minority ...

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Morningstar, Inc. (2014). Publix Super Mkts, Inc. Retrieved from Morningstar: http://financials.morningstar.com/income-statement/is.html?t=PUSH®ion=usa&culture=en-US&ownerCountry=USA
Publix Asset Management Company. (2014). Our Benefits. Retrieved from Publix: http://www.publix.com/careers/whypublix/OurBenefits.do
Publix Asset Management Company. (2014). Workforce Diversity & Inclusion. Retrieved from Publix: http://www.publix.com/about/DiversityInAction.do
Solomon, B. (2013, July). The Wal-Mart Slayer: How Publix's People-First Culture Is Winning The Grocer War. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/07/24/the-wal-mart-slayer-how-publixs-people-first-culture-is-winning-the-grocer-war/
Workforce. (2004, January). Turnover in Supermarkets. Retrieved from Workforce: http://www.workforce.com/articles/turnover-in-supermarkets

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