How Kroger Uses Tech to Make Employees' Jobs Easier
During day two of Progressive Grocer’s GroceryTech event, Kroger VP of Associate and Operations Product Experience Mindy Rector took to the stage to discuss how technology can help engage and retain employees.
Kroger ensures that its associates have tools that are intuitive and easy to use so they can do their jobs more efficiently.
“I think about when you purchase a new phone, and you get that phone home and open the box, there aren't instructions in the box, typically,” Rector explained. “And so how do we put the right tools in the hands of our associates that are just that easy, that are intuitive to use, easy to understand, require a little to no training? That really is a big portion of our goal on providing them with tools.”
Gamification plays a big part in associate-facing technology at Kroger.
“Gamification in my mind just makes the workplace a lot more fun,” said Rector. “When we inject gamification in the tools and capabilities that we give our associates, it does make them enjoy their job a lot better and it helps us meet the KPIs or the outcomes that we're really driving towards. I don't think anybody shows up to work thinking, ‘I want to tank the KPI today.’ ‘I want to make this process longer.’ ‘I want to make a customer's life miserable.’ That's not why they're showing up to work. And so by providing them with gamification, they really can compare how they're doing against the goals that have been set for them in their role, and even in comparison to a peer.”
Rector continued: “Society and this generation in general, they know technology and they understand technology and they're accustomed to seeing what's the highest score, ‘How did I rank against the high score? Did I come in first?’ ... And if we can make the workplace more fun, then it makes the day go faster for our associates, and they feel that sense of accomplishment."
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Tech tools also need to integrate with the flow of their job. “We really want to make sure that we provide automation that takes away some of the repetitive tasks for our associates so that they can use their amazing talents and skills to service our customers better,” said Rector. “There's a lot of problems that technology can't solve, and so how do we unlock their capacity to really focus on those and automate and provide them tools that make it a lot easier for them to do the rest of their job?”
Additionally, Rector discussed the importance of using tech tools to enhance the customer experience.
“I look at fresh as an example,” she observed. “We have a lot of tools and mechanisms in place that track temperature, and you look at strawberries coming all the way through the supply chain. If we have too much inventory or not enough inventory in the stores, it really will affect the customer experience, and we want to make sure that we capture every sale possible and ensure that that customer, when they walk in the store, they find everything that they're looking for. If they don't, unfortunately, not only could we possibly lose the sale for that day, but we may lose future sales as well. They may not come back to us.”
Progressive Grocer is hosting its annual GroceryTech event June 10-12 at the Marriott Dallas Uptown. This one-of-a-kind conference is geared toward grocery retail executives who are seeking new solutions to accelerate tech-enabled growth in every corner of their business.
