Abstract

With a motto of employees first, customers second, the HR team at Wegmans have a big role to fill in. While the need to recruit smart, innovative, loyal, friendly employees, the team also needs to sustain the feeling of being part of the big Wegmans family. Wegmans was one of the 100 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ list every year starting from 1998 to 2017.This case is about the HR Practices, subtle aspects of the organization culture and leadership followed at Wegmans where the answer to “Wegmanism” is answered with plethora of examples. However, some analysts felt balancing growth and preserving the culture may be at loggerheads in the company. The debate continued if Wegmans would survive and thrive in the new age of mergers of grocery stores in US.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• To understand the HR practices that makes a company the best employer.
• To understand the interventions followed to reinforce an organizational culture.

Keywords

Wegmans; Retail; HR Practices; Octapace culture model; Edgar Schien Culture model; Bolman and Deal leadership approach; Organization culture; Recruitment; On boarding; Training; Employee empowerment; Story telling; Meeting in a box; Flexible work schedules; Correlation analysis