Chapter 12: On The Job Video: Stew Leonard's-Benefits

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>> My name is Jill Leonard Tavello [phonetic]. I'm one of generation two. My father Stew Leonard started his company in 1969. Only had seven items and about nine people working here. So today to have four food stores, nine wine stores and grow to be over $400 million with 2500 people working here is just amazing to us. And you know coming here as a little girl it was just watching my dad every day and how he handled customers and what he did with the people and how important they were and how he made everybody feel like a family. And we just try to keep that culture of sort of that warm, sort of you know you are part of making Stew Leonard's successful. It's not just Stew Leonard.

>> You know there is I think a lot of things that make this a great place to work. Our culture, I think, is very unique. We really care about our team members. It's a fun place to work. We empower our team members. We also provide great pay and benefits. My name is Karen Mazako, Vice President of Human Resources. We have always offered affordable essential benefits to our team members. You know we offer great medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, 401K, savings and retirement plan. When companies were not even offering preventive care, we were offering free preventative care. We have an onsite health and wellness center. It's staffed by an RN and she's not only onsite in one of our stores. She visits all of our stores. In a competitive market that exists today, you always have to be a leader but you have to offer more than just pay and benefits.

>> They offer a lot of fun benefits. We have appreciation dinners every year. Every department we get the teams together and we thank them for a great job they do. It's a lot of fun, great food, music, beamed out parties. We have picnics every year, holiday parties. We have gift cards from the Leonard's. Every Thanksgiving they give us a gift card.

>> Hi, my name is Rena and I'm the Human Resources Manager at Stew Leonard's in Newington. We also have lots of trips that we go on. We go hiking, kayaking. We'll go to the zoo. We'll go the casino. We'll go to different just fun things outside of work so that we can get together outside of work and have fun.

>> You know one of the things that we love to say at Stew Leonard's is that we grow our own. And you know we really invest in our people. We provide them, they join Stew Leonard's and if they're interested in a career and you know willing to do the work and go to training classes then they'll have opportunities here. We have Stew Leonard's University and we offer to our team members 50 hours of training each year. And we offer you know everything from front line skills training you know all the way up to advanced leadership training. We use both onsite trainers. We have two people who are devoted to training and leadership development. We also bring in you know experts from the outside to help us with many of our leadership programs.

>> Every year our managers get together with a team member for their annual review and we talk about goals. We talk about what do you really want to do with your career at Stew Leonard's? So if a team member says hey, I really want to become a chef, sure why not? We can give you college reimbursement, tuition reimbursement to help them with their education so that they can become a chef and reach their goal.

>> But right now I'm doing my MBA program. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Arrellano [phonetic] and I'm an HR Coordinator in Yonkers. I think it's very important for us to offer this type of benefit of tuition reimbursement because I feel like it's like I'm learning more. And I'm using these tools that I'm learning towards work. I feel like all the benefits that Stew Leonard's has given us gives us more confidence to just give more to our customers to make them happy.

>> We invest in our team members. We just don't hire someone. We invest in them. We look at a couple of things when we measure the dollars that we spend. So you know we're a business so you know that's definitely a concern to us. We always look at participation rates. You know how many people are participating in the different activities and events that we offer? We look at claim dollars. You know how are our medical costs? Are they you know decreasing, increasing, staying the same? That's critical to us. And many of our part timers you know start when they're 15 years old. They you know work during high school. They participate in our scholarship program. They come back for summers during college and many join us after college. So our retention is very high, our turnover is very low. It takes happy team members to create happy customers. And that truly is the foundation of our culture. And if you focus on doing that then the business and the profits are going to come naturally.

PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IN COMPLETE SENTENCES BASED ON THE TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED ABOVE. THANK YOU.

1. How would you evaluate the benefits offered by Stew Leonard's? Is there anything you would suggest that could make the benefits package offered by the company more effective, especially in terms of costs?

2. Are the benefits discussed in this video voluntary or mandatory? What benefits does Stew Leonard's legally have to provide?

3. Elizabeth Arrellano, the HR Coordinator in Yonkers for Stew Leonard's, says that the company invests in employees but that they also measure the dollars they spend. In particular, she says they look at participation rates for activities and events and at claim dollars for health insurance. Why would these two figures be good ways of measuring whether or not Stew Leonard's investment in benefits was cost-effective? What other metrics might the company want to evaluate to determine what payoffs Stew Leonard's was getting from its benefits program?