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from the happy-employees-make-happy-customers dept.
Wegmans is a family-owned grocery store chain. NYTimes noted it can actually claim a "cult following".
The Center for American Progress reports
It manages to have a huge selection while offering prices that can compete with Walmart, but that it does it while treating its employees well.
The perks start with pay, which for hourly store employees is a little more than $33,000 a year on average. By contrast, Walmart has admitted that more than half of its employees make less than $25,000 a year.
[...]but that's not what makes the company famous for employee satisfaction, landing it on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year since the list began. It also offers generous benefits. It pays about 85 percent of the costs of health care coverage, including dental, for its full-time employees and offers insurance to part-time workers who put in 30 hours a week. It offers 401(k) plans with a salary match of up to 3 percent of an employee's contribution.
And it has a scholarship program[...]
Wegmans also offers more work/life balance than most retail jobs.[...]
These benefits aren't just altruistic. The company generates $7.1 billion in revenue and is profitable. "When you think about employees first, the bottom line is better," the company's vice-president for human resources has said. The company boasts a 5 percent turnover rate among full-time employees, compared to a 27 percent[paywall] rate for the industry. That comes with a cost, as it often eats up about 20 percent of a worker's salary to replace him.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:24PM
It's easy to blame Walmart when we see other operations that treat their employees better making a fair profit. Its the same pool of consumers. It's true that people should avoid the Walmarts of the world if they can afford to, but that's not the whole story.
For example, quality. It does make sense to pay a bit more for quality, but that presumes you have a reasonable basis to judge quality BEFORE you buy. Too often "quality" brands at some point pull a fast one and just re-brand the same crap that is also sold as a no-name product. Wityh that happening, many consumers must rely only on price. If you're going to be ripped with poor quality either way, you might as well get ripped off for a few dollars less.
TFA is showing us a company that was willing to accept a little less on this quarter's report in order to show better results next year through better employee loyalty.