Trader Joe's Uses to Promote a Positive

Trader Joe's uses to promote a positive work environment for its employees. Determine at least three (3) ways in which Trader Joe's is able to increase job satisfaction and performance. Trader Joe's is excellent in what retailers consider delivering the last one hundred feet; the last 100 feet are always the hardest (Lewis, 2005). To overcome these obsticles, Trader Joe's places a significant amount of attention towards its human resources. For example, the company realizes that its employees really are its brand and recruits and trains accordingly.

Furthermore, even when most companies are cutting labor costs to try to improve margins, companies like QuikTrip, the grocery-store chain Trader Joe's, and Costco Wholesale are proving that the decision to offer low wages is a choice, not an economic necessity (Quinton, 2013). Determine how Trader Joe uses the management process (planning, organizing, leading, and controlling) to develop it's employees Planning is the process manager's use for identifying and electing appropriate goals and actions for the organization (UHV, N.d.).

Planning -- Trader Joe has a progressive human resources policy that focuses on providing the employees everything they need to be effective and efficient. This includes industry leading compensation and a support network that includes instant feedback. Organizing -- Human Resources at Trader Joe's provides almost instant feedback. This allows the employees to know exactly what they are doing right or wrong in a timely manner. This allows employees to acclimate to the culture quickly as well as the company a considerable amount of control over organizing their HR base.

Leading - The Captain runs the ship at Trader Joe's. As the store manager, the Captain is responsible for ensuring that our customers have a WOW customer experience every time they shop (Trader Joe's, N.d.). The Captain lives the Trader Joe's values and culture and develops Crew Members to be able to handle increasing responsibilities as we grow. Captains are salaried and all of our Captains are promoted from within (from the role of Mate).

The company puts a great deal of time and effort into ensuring that the individual locations have a well-qualified store manager that fully embraces the company's culture and values. Controlling -- Although Trader Joe's definitely has a progressive employment policy, they have definitely had to make some tough controlling decisions over the last few years. One decision for example has been the policy to no longer offer healthcare to part time workers.

As of 2014, Trader Joe's announced that it would no longer be offering health care coverage to part-time workers and these employees would be one their own to seek coverage through Obamacare (Jamieson, 2014). 3. Suggest two (2) ways that leaders can effectively manage relationships in general by using the four ( 4) EI competencies There are many insights that the EI model offers that can be used to guide leaders in running the retail operations at Trader Joe's. The two that seem to be most relevant are social awareness and relationship management.

Trader Joe's focuses a lot of effort into marketing towards diversity. Therefore, employees must embrace this diversity and foster strong relationships to foster customer loyalty and benefit from such activities as word of mouth marketing. Thus not only must employees be competent in the internal culture, but they must also be aware of the cultures that are present in the external environment. 4. Recommend at least three ( 3) leadership practices that Trader Joe's could implement in order to increase the competitive edge of the organization. Provide a rational for your response.

One of the leadership practices that Trader Joe already excels at and should diligently work to maintain is product differentiation. Customers are excited to see that the product mix is continually evolving to include many new items that cannot be found elsewhere. Another leadership practice that can help Trader Joe continue to grow its customer base is tribal marketing. This model identifies the leaders of a "tribe," such as a local subculture, and then tries to reach the leadership of.