Introduction
Whole Foods Market, Inc. is the largest chain of natural foods supermarkets operating in the United States. Whole Foods has six core values that drive its company and they include; selling the highest quality natural and organic products, satisfying and delighting customers, supporting their Team Members (Whole Food Employees) happiness and growth, creating wealth through profits and growth, caring about the communities and our environment, creating win-win partnerships with their supplies and promoting the health of their stakeholders through healthy eating education. The company operates stores in 26 states of the US and in the District of Columbia (Whole Foods Market, 2010). Whole Foods offers a wide variety of products that include; meat, poultry, bakery items, catering menus, coffee, and grocery, seafood, liquor, and nutritional diary foods. When determining the job structure at Whole Foods I will consider the core values and apply them to the job analysis and prepared job descriptions. Evaluation of Jobs and Job Structure
After looking over the job descriptions and requirements provided in the case study, I was able to assign job titles as such:
Job A – Prepared Foods Team Member
Job B – Customer Service Team Member
Job C – Prepared Foods Department Team Leader
Job D – Prepared Foods Supervisor
Job E – Dishwasher
Job F – Customer Service Food End Supervisor
Job G – Prepared Foods Associate Team Leader
Job H – Associate Store Team Leader
Job I – Grocery Retail Team Member
Process, Techniques and Factors
The job ranking method is what I decided to use for my Job evaluation technique. While browsing the Whole Foods website and their career paths page, the job opportunities in each store appeared to be hierarchal in nature. There is less than thirty different job classifications for the Whole Foods company. Whole Foods itself has placed the jobs in order from Store Team Leaders, Facility Team Leaders, Regional Presidents and Presidents, and Team Members or Specialized Team Members. Job responsibility, skill, knowledge and ability allowed me to rank these jobs. Although Whole Foods has various departments in the stores, having distinct job requirements makes it easier to group/classify jobs into a predetermined grade. What I mean by this is that a Team Member in the Bakery has the same basic skills and knowledge as a Team Member in Meat, although the responsibilities may differ from bakery to meat, the overall responsibilities and qualifications in the jobs are exactly the same.
Providing excellent customer service and maintaining the departments that they work in are just two of the responsibilities that come to mind. Having a varying pay scale based on the person’s position in the hierarchy is something that is almost a given, but it doesn’t make one person or position more important than the other. According to their own company website “Whole Foods seek individuals who believe in their mission of Whole Foods, Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet-people who are enthusiastic about food and our products, and who want to join a culture of shared fate” (WholeFoodsMarket.com). With that being the companies mission statement individuals who work for Whole Foods understand that they are valued and with the training and development programs that are offered they can be promoted to a higher level with the experience, knowledge and skills they have obtained in their positions.
Evaluation of Job Descriptions
After looking over the job descriptions for the Whole Foods it seems as if the job requirements were the same as the job description. The job description didn’t give a general overview of the positions, which would have been helpful. With that being said the job descriptions could use more structure; while the job descriptions themselves did have most of the duties listed for what the individual need to complete job, they could have written it a bit better. Instead of having a section titled “Kind of Work” and another titled requirements and both sections having exactly the same information in it Whole Foods Market should have a job description section and a qualifications section. Having the qualifications section add to the job listings would allow Whole Foods Market to layout the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for each job that is offered with the company. This would’ve allowed for a smoother process in assigning job titles.
Conclusion
Being that this is my first time assigning job titles and job structures, I discovered that the process is difficult. When you have the requirements and duties need to complete the job, but no information regarding the skills, knowledge or qualifications needed it creates a problem when writing an effective job description and listing the qualifications need to apply for the job. By having all of this information it would allow current employees and future employees know what is required of them to either look for a promotion or apply. This case study overall showed me what happens when a company doesn’t have an effective job posting.
