Associated Grocers

Source: Food and Drink Digital

Date :18/03/2008 03:52:15

John Gillespie, senior vice president at Associated Grocers, explains how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina led his organization to rethink its business priorities and employee relations

Written by Emmet Cole and produced by James McCann

During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Baton Rouge-based Associated Grocers (AG) did just about everything right. When the storm plowed through, the company’s 600,000 square foot facility never lost power. In Katrina’s aftermath, AG employees worked diligently around the clock to ensure that those affected by the storm, including friends, family and neighbors had access to the water and ice they needed to survive and to essential food and household items they’d need to rebuild.

But in the months that followed, the region lost much of its workforce, as former residents relocated and many evacuated employees never returned. As the area recovered, an already tight employment market felt the pinch even more as the local labor force was enticed to help in the rebuilding effort. Even fast food joints were offering $12 an hour to refill the labor void. The ensuing shakeup exposed deep flaws in AG’s employee systems.

“Prior to the storm it wasn’t much better, and the ‘Twin Sisters’ only aggravated the situation,” says John Gillespie, AG’s senior vice president of Distribiton and Transportation. “In any time of duress, all your systems are taxed to the max. So if we had any systems that needed attention, Katrina and Rita only accelerated the need to address the issues.”

Gillespie says that the company had neglected its employees in four essential areas of didactic information: what employees needed in order to do the job, what the company expected from them, what’s happening around the company, and gauging how disconnected employees felt. The storm also exposed a need for better supervisor training and communication.

The problem, according to Gillespie, was that the company, which distributes groceries to more than 220 stores in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, did an excellent job focusing on customer service, but did not devote enough resources to ensure that its employees’ needs were addressed. “We could send a truck an extra 50 miles to deliver special orders, but we were not delivering that same level of attention to the folks who loaded the cucumbers on the trailer,” Gillespie says.

“Up until a few years ago our corporate mission was ‘the success and survival’ of the independent retailer. After 50 years in business we changed that to ‘success and support’ of the independent retailer. Since the storm, we have devoted much more energy to the employee’s quality of life.”

So with the help of Supply Chain consultant firm SSA, the company conducted a close examination through employee surveys, feedback and critical review. AG began constructing a new, comprehensive system for employee management and communication. The result, inspired by a poem Gillespie gave at the company’s annual driver’s banquet, was a project Associated Grocers calls PARAKEET.

The PARAKEET Project

The P stands for “Plan” and the A for “Acting,” says Gillespie, who describes these aspects as “all of those standard clichés about getting it together and following up on what you say you’re going to do.”

The R is “Recognize,” explains Gillespie, who believes that companies too often admonish employees for doing wrong without ever recognizing what’s done well. The company wants to create a focus on doing the right things when no one is looking, and hopes its employees will recognize the team effort needed to foster such attitudes.

A is for “Assist”: Associated Grocers is encouraging its leaders to listen, understand the entire issue, and then assist in every possible way. “We often tend to offer solutions or excuses before listening to the whole problem,” Gillespie says. “Very often, if we took the time to listen we’d learn that an issue may have nothing to do with work, but rather with a situation in an employee’s private life. We actually offer a training session on how to handle issues outside of work.

K stands for “Keep”, as the company focuses on retaining workers by making the warehouse a place where employees enjoy working and everyone takes the time to care.

E is for “Educate,” Communication and Training, Training, Training; and not just for supervision. The company wants to educate employees in non-traditional areas, and functions not usually associated with the jobs they perform.

E also stands for “Encourage,” and it’s what Gillespie calls “one of the best things to come from the program.” AG is developing in-house training programs to encourage employees to seek higher roles within the company - programs like one that trains hourly workers as truck drivers through an LSU extension program in Lafayette. AG also has systems in place to encourage new ideas and input from the workers on the floor.

Finally, T is for “Trust”, which Gillespie describes as an effort to “try some things that are different, new, or re-visit the way you used to do it” and that will “require everyone’s trust and support in terms in looking to determine if the plans and actions will get the anticipated results.”

On the loading dock

Gillespie believes PARAKEET will take time to implement and to iron out the kinks. In practice, the company has had to make several large-scale changes in structure, communication, training/retention and “team pilot” strategies.

Associated Grocers has arranged for supervision structures to become more vertical than in the past. For example, supervisors used to oversee a specific function or team (like forklifts or order selection) which created myopic viewpoints. In the current system, supervisors oversee specific departments, like frozen or grocery, and coordinate all the newly created ‘teams’ within.

Being involved promotes self esteem, and helps employees feel good about working, which means they’ll stay. “Employees need to have some kind of feeling of ownership,” Gillespie says.

A genuine challenge to any food distribution warehouse, he says, is the development of teams since the primary functions, such as selection and forklift operation, are such ‘individual functions’. Teams have sometimes been difficult to assemble and manage, and Gillespie cites the first team Associated Grocers assembled - the freezer team - which failed when half the workers bid out to work in a different area.

But the last team formed, and the one least likely to fit, has turned into an improbable success story that the company cites as evidence that the process can work.

The loading dockworkers didn’t fit into any specific teams, and as a unit, the 18 workers in charge of 75 doors could not be forced into a vertical structure. Furthermore, each employee had responsibility over a set of doors under the previous setup, which sometimes created massive work flow inequities. The company hoped workers would help each other in uneven times, but that “perfect world” hadn’t always happened.

“It was sort of like bringing a bunch of Huns together,” Gillespie says. “There was no ownership.”

But by sitting down and listening to the team’s suggestions and complaints, AG developed solutions. “The way the Huns would do it, so the tribes wouldn’t kill each other, was they’d put the kids of one tribe in the warring tribe’s camp,” Gillespie says. “The epiphany was one night when the perishable team wanted to call it a day, but the grocery dock was holding them up. So the entire perishable loading team went down to the grocery dock and started helping load the trucks. We had a team that came together. Now they work much closer to each other in terms of common goals, which are customer service and leaving work together at a reasonable time.”

Evolution, Not Revolution

The PARAKEET project is still a work in progress, but Gillespie is confident that it will create a sense of team and ownership among the workers, and improve

communication from the ground up.

“It’s evolution, not a revolution,” Gillespie says. “If you’re going to do it right, it takes employee involvement, letting employee ideas succeed or fail.”

To aid this, AG has sought support and suggestions from its business partners as well. “Please don’t get the idea that I am the only one involved here. Our unloading provider has helped us reduce carrier time at our dock, for instance,” Gillespie adds. “Based on feedback from the floor we are re-slotting the facility. SSA continues to check on our flight path. This is a team effort that is not limited to the four walls.”

Putting cable TV in the employee break room and providing incentives each month for attendance and performance are just the start of Gillespie’s revolution. Employee retention has increased, and AG continues to turn a trying time in 2005 into a chance to do better. “We’re not doing this because it’s something we said we’d do in PARAKEET,” Gillespie says. “We’re doing it because it makes good business sense. All I did was let the bird out of the cage.

Click here to view the corporate brochure on Associated Grocers