Introduction
A business where there is a constant interaction between the customers and employees, the performance of the employees greatly influences a company’s general performance (Hoffman, & Bateson, 2010). Employee’s attitude towards their work influences how they perform. For example, the management should put more effort into ensuring that the employees are fully devoted to their work. Trader Joe’s is a company in which employees interact with customers on a daily basis. Therefore, the company has set up measures that aim to improve employee satisfaction. In an environment where employees are satisfied, there are always satisfactory services provided to the customers. The most important thing to a customer is to feel also valued if they are given quality attention and this may only happen if the employee-customer interaction is satisfactory (Hoffman, & Bateson, 2010).
Ways used to increase employee performance
Making the environment conducive for running of the expected responsibilities is the number one way to increase job satisfaction and performance. As such, the employees are often happy doing whatever it is that they are expected to do. At Trader Joe’s, the employees are encouraged to eat and be knowledgeable of the products at the store’s shelves unlike other companies where they only tell their employees to research without tasting on the products they sell. This gives the employees a broad range of knowledge of the product. The tasting could be regarded as an incentive to the workers in the essence that that the employees have the freedom in performing their duties (Hoffman, & Bateson, 2010).
Having something that the employees can look forward to in the case that they do their job well is a way of motivating them. The employees at Trader Joe’s can look forward to managerial positions as the company promotes its staff to these positions due to their knowledge of how the store are ran. This aspect translates to that there is often an appraisal of the employees to look for those who qualify to take up the mandates of managing company’s store. Therefore, employees do their jobs with maximum devotion, as they never know when a job opening for administrative positions would come up. Other than that, evaluations are an enormous influence to a performance at the workplace (Zewotir, 2012). Work performance evaluation is an important strategy in a company where they deal with a large number of employees. This helps the employees to be on their toes since they realize the consequences they were evaluated to be underperformers. In this case, everyone in the organization is encouraged to put in their best for the purposes of securing their job.
Trader Joe’s also improves performance by the employees through having them educated on what is expected of them when working at the store. Performance improvement in any sector is dependent on the knowledge endowed onto the performers of these activities. The same situation applies to Trader Joe’s company. Through education of its employees, the company ensures that they know what is expected from them once they join the company (Zewotir, 2012). For instance, they are taught on the importance of commitment. Furthermore, the company’s managers are well paid and, therefore, they are encouraged to manage the business better than in the case that they were not as well paid. The good payment could translate to an incentive to work harder in their duties (Zewotir, 2012).
Management process in employee development
Once a company has encouraged their employees to work harder, those in higher offices should take it upon themselves to employ appropriate management strategies. A proper strategy always starts with planning. One of the slogans in the company is “a penny we save is a penny you save” (Titimaea, 2006). The slogan is taken to portray cost saving measures at the organization. A perfect example given is that the CEO of the company operates without a secretary in a bid to save on costs. This could have been a plan to encourage the other employees to work with unnecessary luxuries. Therefore, the company can make elaborate plans on costs, and overheads to be incurred in financial periods and, perhaps, save some for employee motivation purposes. Leading by example is one thing that is clearly experienced at the company (Titimaea, 2006). The employees, therefore, have their leaders to look up to for guidance in doing what is expected.
Effective relationship management
Recognition of what the employees need so as to be more at ease with each other would be a way in which leaders could work towards forging good relationships in the workplace. Appealing to the emotions of an employee is always the best way to improve the employee’s performance. Once an employee is fully devoted to his or her responsibilities, the relationship in the workplace also improves. Emotional intelligence includes recognizing one’s feelings and those of others (Titimea, 2006). For instance, regular meetings where all employees would meet and talk about challenges and help each other would be ideal to bring them closer.
In addition to that, the same treatment by the management would also show them that none of them is preferred to the other. Equal treatment eliminates the chances of one feeling inferior to the other and, therefore, disliking he who seems superior (Titimea, 2006). As such, equal treatment would promote cohesiveness at the workplace and, thus, cultivate good relationships between the employees.
Leadership practices to improve competitiveness
Communication is a major area that helps promote a business performance, and it includes intra and intercommunication between companies (Doherty, Helms, & Wright, 2005). In the case of the Trader Joe’s, communication would entail getting to the market and learning consumers’ preferences and needs. The shock on the rating received by the organization means that they all along thought that they were providing what the consumers needed, but the case was not as so. This means that if they had a team that would do a market research, they would have identified the products and services that suited the consumers and it would have eliminated the costs of producing other products (Doherty, Helms, & Wright, 2005).
In addition to communication, the leadership also has to understand the traits and behaviours of the market it sells to for increased performance of the company (Daft, 2007). The ideology that the company gets the consumers to try new products could be misleading. It could be that once a consumer tries out the product; they never get back to it anymore. Understanding the market trends would give the organization a chance to retain customers and not deal with new customers on a daily basis (Daft, 2007).
Further, the leadership also needs to focus not only on the consumers, but on the products in the store as well. Based on the rating received, the company should assess what exactly is not being done and lay out strategies to improve. The fact that the stock does not include a vast number of products on its shelves could mean that the few present are not what many consumers wish to have. The same translates to that the company is not providing what is in demand in the market and, therefore, underperforming.
Conclusion
Running a business is all about ethical conduct. Whatever one would not like to be done to him or she, he or she should not do it to others. This can be termed as the argument upon which Trader Joe’s employee-employer relationships are based. However, the mistake the company does is laying too much emphasis on the consumer interaction with the staff at the workplace at the expense of the products on the shelves.
References
Daft, R. (2007). The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.
Doherty, J. J., Doherty, J. J., Helms, M. M., & Wright, G. W. (2005). Employee Discharge and Documentation. Lorman Business Center.
Hoffman, K., & Bateson, J. (2010). Services marketing: Concepts, strategies, & cases. Cengage Learning.
Titimaea, M. A. (2006). Emotional intelligence, management concept: a contributing factor for effective service delivery. In Environment Forum (p. 32).
Zewotir, T. (2012). On employees’ performance appraisal: the impact and treatment of the raters’ effect. South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences, 15(1), 44-54.