Recently, Wegmans, a family-owned grocery store chain, announced that it would open its first location in New York. The privately-owned company, founded in 1916, operates 82 grocery stores in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, and its list of accolades is long and growing:
In 2014, Fortune ranked Wegmans #12 on its list of the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For,’ making it the 17th year Wegmans has made the list. Consumer Reports also named it the #1 supermarket in the country, not once, but three times; once in 2009, in 2012, and 2014. [1]
The store seems to have obtained a ‘cult following,’ as reported by New York Times. The reason why it is loved so much can be attributed to its low prices, which are comparable to Walmart, and if that wasn’t enough… they treat their employees well, too!
The perks start with pay, which for hourly store employees is a little more than $33,000/year, on average. In contrast, Walmart has admitted that more than half of its employees make less than $25,000/year, although it recently announced a wage increase and retail sales workers make a median $21,410 annual salary. [2]
Glassdoor and Payscale also show that a cashier working in Wegmans can, on average, expect to make more than $9/hour. Not only that, its employee benefits are also very generous. It pays about 85 percent of the costs of healthcare coverage, including dental, for its full-time employees and offers insurance to part-time workers who put in at least 30 hours/week. It offers 401(k) plans with a contribution match of up to 3 percent.
If all this wasn’t enough, it even has a scholarship program that awards tuition assistance to employees, which has paid out $100 million to 32,000 employees since it began in 1984. The program gives part-time employees up to $1,500/year and full-time employees up to $2,200/year to study at any college, in any field.
To contrast that, Starbucks’ scholarship program used to be only for studying careers that would prepare the employees for working at Starbucks. Now the program is only applicable for studying at Arizona State University. Wegmans offers all of this in a time when the number of companies offering employees college education assistance has been trending downward.
Furthermore, Wegmans offers an undeniably wonderful work/life balance. It includes 11 days of paid vacation and three additional days of paid time off per year. Another indicator that frequently tops the surveys of its own workforce as the most important benefit offered, is the flexible scheduling. The company gives its managers the power to devise their own schedules and work with the needs of their employees, and many workers use an online system to lay out their availability around their own personal schedules.
These benefits aren’t just altruistic, Wegmans generates $7.1 billion in revenue and is more than profitable. “When you think about employees first, the bottom line is better,” the company’s vice-president of human resources said. The company boasts a 5% turnover rate among full-time employees, compared to a 27% average rate for the industry. “What some companies believe is that you can’t grow and treat your people well,” says a senior vice president, adding, “We’ve proven that you can grow and treat your people well.”
SOURCES:
[1] http://www.thekitchn.com/what-happened-when-i-walked-into-a-wegmans-for-the-first-time-204782
[2] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/05/14/3658771/wegmans/
