recruiting trial at fresh & easy

It's going to be another memorable week this week, as we start interviewing potential store employees as part of a recruitment trial.

In our business, we can only be successful if we create a workplace that people enjoy, so we have spent much time and effort talking to people about what would make a great place to work for them, as we have done with customers about what would be their ideal shopping trip.

Indeed, the two are inextricably linked. Customers told us that the stores that offer friendly service do so because the employees enjoy working there.

We found that the most important thing about a great workplace was being treated with respect. So we set out to create a positive, team-based culture, to achieve this...and so far, we have been remarkably successful: our staff satisfaction survey results are the highest the research company that does it for us have ever seen.

But it's one thing creating that among 150 people in an office. The real challenge is to maintain that culture as we start recruiting hundreds of people to run our stores in southern California, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

So the recruitment trial will be a big test of whether we've got our rewards and benefits package right, consistent with creating a great shopping trip and a great place to work.

Since there's been so much speculation about what our package will be like, we announced details at our launch in Los Angeles last thursday (you'll find the press release on our website if you're interested). One thing I'm particularly proud of is that we're planning for every job in our stores to be over 20 hours, and we'll be offering affordable healthcare for every job over 20 hours, with only a 90 day qualifying period. Needless to say, our lowest pay rate is well above the minimum wage.

We'll discover from the trial whether the package will enable us to recruit the people we need. And indeed, in the end it'll be our employees who'll judge whether or not we manage to maintain that positive, team-based culture once we open lots of stores.

That's why I love retailing. It's so democratic: our customers and our employees will decide whether or not we've been successful in creating a great shopping trip and a great place to work.... and that's how it should be.