Week 7

Whole Foods Market

Student’s name

Institution

Date

Introduction

Whole Food Market is one of the known American food chains started in 1980. It has emerged with Safe Way and Clarksville Natural Grocery stores. Currently, Whole Food has several stores across the country over 400 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and a total of 91000 employees CITATION Fer18 \l 1033 (Fernandes & Srinivasan, 2018). It has a market capitalization of over $10 billion. It the 4th largest stores based on sales volume for the previous years. The mission of Whole Food Market is to promote vitality and well being of people by supplying the highest quality of food to customers. The corporate core value of the company is to selling the highest quality natural and organic products to customers and offer efficient support team member create wealth through profits and growth. It is also to serve and support the local and global communities.

The organizational culture of the Whole Food Market is the efficient delivery of quality and organic food to customers. The company believes in a high standard of service and this has been integrated into its norms to become its corporate culture and norms, which guide the service delivery. The objective of Whole Food Market is to promote vitality and offer quality food and organic as it builds a strong market share and loyalty CITATION Mou17 \l 1033 (Vennamanen, 2017). This is what has made the store to perform above several stores in the United States. The corporate agenda is to have increased its market share, increase its profit and become the best food store in the region. Over, the last years, the company has implemented several strategies to become the best food store and therefore, the corporate strategy is meant to increase its value through market acquisitions, which is important to the shareholders of the company. This paper, therefore, provides an illustration of various training or interventions strategy which the company can use to address its needs. It includes interventional strategies, and cost the company is likely to incur on the process.

Recommended Training Strategy and Design

Training is one of the best intervention strategies which are used to address the need for employees and the company. Whole Food Market has several employees and based on the assessment conducted its employees require training in areas of customer service and management. Research indicates that Whole Food Market has had several problems related to customer service. Its customer service is not proactive and efficient compared to other players in the market. This, therefore, requires serious attention to improve the company’s service delivery hence increased market share. This would help the company in improving its customer support rating in the market, which would help the company to improve its market share and loyalty in the market. The recommended training strategies are virtual and traditional classroom methods, which would require the company to have scheduled training session over the weekend for employees in areas where they need improvement. Webster (2017) pointed out that most companies offer training in their boardrooms and conferences to all employees in areas the company feels employees need adjustment. The assessment established that managers require serious attention to the customer service department. The company has a weak link on how issues affecting customers are being addressed and therefore, through training on customer service and management, and office etiquette, the company would be a help to increase service.

Customer management and service delivery is a key sector for companies and lack of it would disadvantage a company. The training is scheduled to be conducted in the evenings in the company’s training room from Monday to Friday for a period of one three months. It shall cover areas such as emailing ethic, phone ethics, and customer management, dressing code, and handling of customers under different condition CITATION Ama17 \l 1033 (Webster, 2017). The managers expect positive improvement from the training how the way store managers, salespersons which the store address concerns raised by customers. This training would provide employees to increase their interactions with customers and this is likely to improve the Whole Food Market performance.

The training materials shall include pamphlets, identified textbook, pens, writing pads, projector, computer and writing board. The trainees to be provided with the necessary materials required for training such as writing kits to facilitate their training. However, the company intends to hire an expert in customer relationship management for facilitating the training. The simulation techniques will be applied to ensure that the trainees adapt to the best market standard. Since Whole Food Market competes with companies such as Wal-Mart Supermarket, it would be important to ensure that all employees are highly trained in customer management. First, employees to benefit from the training would be employees from the sales department, customer support and front office service. It is important because the customers are always in contact with these employees and therefore, it is important to ensure that they are equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge needed to address concerns raised by customers. The rest of the employees will be trained as well CITATION Har15 \l 1033 (Abdul, 2015). The training will focus on the company’s core values, culture or tradition. These trainings are essential because they intend to ensure that employees develop strong cultural belief of the company in order to help in the provision of efficient services. A study has indicated that employees are essential for marketing the brand and therefore, ensuring that employees believe in the brand is important.

Cost-Benefit Analysis (ROI

Companies spend a lot of money on training their employees. It is important to understand the return of investment for such training. A study has established that the technical and sales department gives a lot of return on investment compared to other departments. However, Whole Food Market is expected to benefit a lot from the training of sales, and customer care department. Since the company core mission is based on quality service delivery, training customer care employee is likely to improve its quality of service. Research also indicates that training of employees has been regarded as one of the best strategies to improve the performance of employees. A study by Abdul (2015) indicated that training offers knowledge and skills to employees and therefore, employees would be able to transfer what they learn into the service delivery. Whole Food Training is likely to change the way the company provides service and this would be essential for its strategic growth.

The training is likely to increase management skills and service delivery, which will have a lot of positive impact on the company's return. Whole Food Market is expected to spend a lot of money on training. This is based on the calculation of the amount which will be spent on one employee in terms of allowance, training materials and hiring of the facilitators. However, the return of investment would be measured based on the increased productivity of employees. Whole Food Market main concern regarding employees is lack of commitment and inefficient service delivery. Therefore, the return of an investment will be valued based on the service delivery and the market share gained after training. Whole Food Market return on investment would be realized from its market performance. Once its employees become more confident and offer the best service. The company is expected to improve its rating, which is a key indicator for many investors. This is expected to increase its stock index, market share and profit by the financial year. It is, therefore, an important training which the company treats with a lot of serious to ensure that it is able to compete efficiently with market competitors. Whole Food is likely to experience growth in share market and profitability as well. It is estimated that the benefit of training would be 150% based on the assessment conducted. The return of the company would increase from share, stock hence profitability. This makes the intended training as a key strategy, which the company can use to increase its general performance in the market.

Training Evaluation Plan

In order to understand the benefits of the training offered by the company to its employees, Whole Food Market will have to conduct a survey and relies on feedback from clients and employees themselves. The company intends to use a survey to determine the impact of the training. The company will conduct a survey at the end of the training among employees to determine their efficiency and core achievement after the end of the training. Besides conducting a survey among the employees and customers, the company will monitor its performance on the stock market. The increased performance indicates a positive effect of the training. Since the sales and customer care department are a key department in service delivery, it is expected to improve the general sales through increasing market share due to positive feedback from clients. The feedback from clients will also be used to evaluate the training and determine whether the intended objectives are achieved or not. The intended evaluation will be done in phases. The first evaluation will be conducted immediately after training to determine whether employees understood the core objectives and whether those objectives have been met by the training offered. The second evaluation would be conducted using feedback and survey from clients to discover whether the service delivery has increased after training. This intends to determine the change of service delivery and their opinion regarding service delivery.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abdul, H. (2015). Training Intervention and Strategies for positive learning Transfer. Journal of

International Resource Development and Management, 2-31.

Fernandes, L., & Srinivasan, R. (2018). Consumer analysis of Whole Foods Market.

International Journal of Latest Engineering and Management Research (IJLEMR), 2-31.

JAIN, S. (2015). Cost-effectiveness of Training Programmes in Insurance Sector of India.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311772263_Cost-effectiveness_of_Training_Programmes_in_Insurance_Sector_of_India, 2-34.

Vennamanen, M. (2017). Whole Foods Market, Marketing Strategies and Programs Analysis. 2-

34.

Webster, A. L. (2017). Human Resources: How to Develop a Training Intervention Program. 2-

18.