Is Employee Engagement the Backbone of the Publix Culture?

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Family-run Publix is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, and they might be the formula for helping to win the war on employee engagement and build an awesome Publix culture. 

According to Scarlett Surveys, “Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work”.

Only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. That fact is amazing to us. These employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. People that are actively engaged in helping move the organization forward. 88% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 38% of the disengaged.  72% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the disengaged.

Engaged employees feel a strong emotional bond to the organization that employs them. This is associated with people demonstrating willingness to recommend the organization to others and commit time and effort to help the organization succeed. It suggests that people are motivated by intrinsic factors (e.g.personal growth, working to a common purpose, being part of a larger process) rather than simply focusing on extrinsic factors.

Passing through Publix’s sliding doors to escape the blistering Merritt Island, Fla. heat is a welcome relief, but it isn’t just the air-conditioning that jumps out at you. As you walk the aisles, bag boys and clerks in sage-green shirts and black aprons routinely smile and ask questions: “How are you today? Can we help you with anything?”

When a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. Instead, an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do. At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most large supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot.

What engages employees?

So what engages employees?

The drivers differ regionally as well as person to person, but employee engagement is largely about social connections happening within the organization. But there are factors unique to certain winning businesses have in common. Let’s examine those that make Publix a winner in employee engagement:

Employee owned business

Publix is  the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers and bakers into the company’s largest collective shareholders. All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation.)

Publix employees (and former employees) are the controlling shareholders, with an 80% stake, worth $16.6 billion. Not surprisingly none of them belongs to a union.

The Publix compensation grants shares of a store-specific bonus pool every 13 weeks. The exact amount varies, but typically 20% of quarterly profits go into that larger pool; 20% of the pool is then paid out in cash to the store’s employees. When competition opens up across the street and sales are impacted, they’re impacted. So employees are incented to make sure they’re doing everything they can to serve that customer to the best of their ability.

Commitment to open, honest communication

Communication is core to the Publix culture and their employee engagement. Employees understand the why behind their jobs – what they’re expected to achieve and how it impacts the relationships to its customer. Collaboration  is highly valued and Publix teams communicate to get projects accomplished and to learn what is working well in other stores.

Related post: Deadly Mistakes that Destroy Employee Engagement

Does a career path matter?

Publix culture … career path development

Employees are encouraged to develop professional goals and connect with colleagues, contributing to growth in all jobs. This demonstrates to all employees there’s a long term future.

Publix almost exclusively promotes from within, and every store displays advancement charts showing the path each employee can take to become a manager. Fifty-eight thousand of the company’s 159,000 employees have officially registered their interest in advancement. Associates are encouraged to rotate through various divisions, from grocery to real estate to distribution, to get a broad sense of the business. A former cake decorator in a store bakery is now in charge of all strategy for its bakeries. A distribution-center manager overseeing 800 associates got his start unloading railcars. There are 34,000 employees who have more than ten years of tenure.

Branding with organization stories

Publix has a great reputation for outstanding employment branding. Being fast, fun, and friendly is part of Publix employees’ DNA. It creates an image of an innovative and fun place to work. A strong employment brand image offers clarity on the Publix culture and what it stands for. This helps to ensure the right people are attracted to the organization and the wrong people apply elsewhere.

Having the right engagement practices are driven by understanding the most meaningful motivators to a company’s employees. Committing to an intentional culture like Publix, one that’s open, transparent, and enables employees to thrive is a very smart investment. Your employees are your business. The better they are, the better your business.

Publix gets it and as a result is winning the war of employee engagement.