Nascar’s Racing Team Essay

How does Trader Joe’s design jobs for increased job satisfaction and higher performance? Trader Joe’s give its appreciation for its employees to increase job satisfaction and higher performance. They puts its money where its mouth is. The starting benefits at Trader Joe’s include medical, dental, and vision insurance, company paid retirement, paid vacation and a 10% employee discount. â€Å"Trader Joe’s compensate workers well. The core of this allegiance is a wage and benefits package that is typically far more competitive than that of most companies in the supermarket industry. Wages may attract high-quality employees, but wages are not necessarily the reason they remain loyal, as any human resources expert can attest. Employees stay because Trader Joe’s has created a culture of success: an environment in which everyone does the same job at one time or another and a place where people’s opinions are respected and talents are nurtured. â€Å"(Excerpted from Trader Joe’s Adventure, by Len Lewis) 1. How does Trader Joe’s design jobs for increased job satisfaction and higher performance? â€Å"Trader Joe’s has designed jobs to increase job satisfaction by showing appreciation in providing more benefits to their employees than other chain grocers. They provide starting benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, company-paid retirement, paid vacation, and a 10% employee discount, Pg. w-100. † Traders Joes also recruits people with certain personality traits that the company wants in their stores. They are able to enrich their employees with knowledge of their products that they are selling, as well as inducing customer involvements. As a result, they are able to have higher job performance because they are able to train and nurture their employees to have the same values and philosophy as the company, as well as granting supreme employee benefits. 2. In what ways does Trader Joe’s demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process planning, organizing, leading, and controlling? There are several ways to demonstrate the importance of each responsibility. First, the buyers will travel all over the world to search the great foods and buying direct from the producer to lower the costs. Second, Trader Joe’s carry only 1500-2000 products so that the customer are easy to choose. Third, Trader Joe’s managers are hired only from within the company. The future leaders should be enroll in training programs such as Trader Joe’s university the foster in them the loyalty necessary to run stores. Fourth, when something happen, Trader Joe’s will quick to respond and post their action alerts on their web site. 2. In what ways does Trader Joe’s demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process–planning, organizing, leading and controlling? For Trader Joe’s, they are able to demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process by establishing a plan to serve quality products with natural ingredients, inspiring flavors, and buying direct from the producer whenever possible, pg. w-99. They also organize their stores to limit its stock, carrying about 1,500 to 2,000 products compared to retail mega-markets with 25,000 to 45,000 products. Through leading, Trader Joe’s support their future leaders by hiring managers only from within the company. Future leaders enroll in training programs called, Trader Joe’s University that foster in them the loyalty necessary to run stores according to both company and customer expectations, pg. w-100. Lastly, Trader Joe demonstrated the responsibility in controlling by placing standards to sell natural based ingredient products, as well as striving to offer the highest quality type foods. 3. Describe the methods that show Trader Joe’s knows the importance of human capital? Since Trader Joe’s makes such an effort to acquire qualified personnel they strive to retain their employees. Trader Joe’s is aware that retaining responsible, knowledgeable, and friendly employees will be significant to the customer service they provide. 4. Explain the value chain as it pertains to Trader Joe’s? In my opinion the value chain at Trader Joe’s begins with its employees and the methods utilized by Trader Joe’s to make them good at providing excellent customer service. â€Å"Employees are encourage to taste and learn about the product† this results in employees who are able to share their experience and expertise of the products they are selling to the consumer. Creating a helpful and customer service environment, which consumers appreciate. 5. 1. It has an extremely loyal following; it’s almost gone beyond being cult,† said Tod Marks, senior project editor for Consumer Reports. â€Å"Trader Joe’s is not conventional by any means, in terms of product mix. † With shelves stocked with unusual store brand items, like cookie butter, Thai lime and chili cashews and wasabi roasted seaweed snacks, Sue Forsyth, a 64-year-old from Brighton, said shopping at Trader Joe’s is â€Å"like an adventure. The food options are really unique,† said Brielle Berman, a 22-year-old Rochester resident. â€Å"I just picked up a bag of coconut chips. Where else are you going to find coconut chips? † Additionally, Marks, who conducted a survey last year of the leading 52 supermarket chains in the country, said Trader Joe’s is affordable and provides top-notch service. â€Å"They are very efficient operators and one of the best stores that offer the best prices,† he said. â€Å"They do a good job. Not many supermarkets are better. † 2. The magic is that Trader Joe’s focuses on Quality rather than Quantity. By carrying fewer items TJ tries to make sure that each of the product they do carry on their shelves is a Quality product and meets up to it’s standards. Also buy having fewer items it’s able to negotiate better prices from the suppliers and thus passes it on to the customer. On average I find TJ to be much cheaper than Whole Foods but the quality is the Benchmark for all to follow. One the things I love at the TJ is the bakery section, they have fresh bread baked in everyday from a local baker. This means the money goes back to the community, lesser transport costs, freshest bread for the customer and decent prices. Not to mention the bread is free from High fructose corn syrup!! 3. To remain competitive in the future, organizations will need to abandon their ideas of information hoarding and embrace knowledge sharing. Competitive success will be based less on how strategically physical and financial resources are allocated, and more on how strategically intellectual capital is managed — from capturing, coding and disseminating information, to acquiring new competencies through training and development, and to re-engineering business processes. The move from an industrially-based economy to a knowledge or information-based one demands a top-notch knowledge management system to secure a competitive edge and a capacity for learning. An organization’s ability to quickly tap into wisdom gives it a competitive edge in the marketplace. As a result, knowledge is displacing capital, natural resources, and labor as the basic economic resource.