By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN
Our readers who live in New England are probably very familiar with the story of the grocery chain Market Basket headquartered in Massachusetts with 71 stores and 25,000 employees throughout New England. Market Basket is a privately held family-owned company. A long-standing and very complex family feud led to the ouster of a beloved longtime CEO “Artie T” in June. No one could have anticipated what happened next.
To protest his firing, his loyal non-unionized employees walked off the job. Not only did the workers stick together, but customers soon followed by boycotting the stores in solidarity. Hundreds of warehouse workers and drivers refused to deliver fresh produce to the chain’s 71 stores, leaving shelves depleted. The chain has lost millions of dollars over the last two months as the stores sat empty and customers shopped elsewhere. With a rapidly sinking company, last week, the board of directors agreed to sell Artie T the controlling shares in the grocery chain. They are now back in business with Artie T as CEO. In talking with employees upon his return, he expressed awe for what they had done……”it should always be people first.”
Employees said it was their allegiance to Demoulas that kept them united. Demoulas is beloved by the workers not only for offering generous benefits — including a profit-sharing plan — but also for stopping to talk to workers, remembering birthdays and attending funerals of employees’ relatives. He also kept prices low despite the protests of his board of directors. Some of the comments from employees are quite compelling.
“He’ll walk into a warehouse and will stop and talk to everyone because he’s genuinely concerned about them,” said Joe Schmidt, a store operations supervisor. “He cares about families, he asks about your career goals, he will walk up to part-timers and ask them about themselves. To him, that cashier and that bagger are just important as the supervisors and the store management team.”
Schmidt said Demoulas once called a store manager after he heard the man’s daughter was critically injured in a car crash. Demoulas wanted to know whether the hospital she was in was giving her the best care possible. “Do we need to move her?” he asked, Schmidt said.”He is just a good man,” Schmidt said. Market Basket employees felt they worked with their CEO and not for him.
The customer support of the employees demonstrated that they could relate to their cause. Social media was a significant tool and mobilized the communities involved to protest against unfairness, inequality, and greedy bosses or owners and to support leaders who buck these trends. Writing for Fortune magazine, Thomas Kochran, a professor at MIT, suggested that it could be the biggest labor event in the century because it defied all traditional doctrines in labor-management relations, labor law, and corporate governance.
5 Lessons Learned for Leaders
1. Employee solidarity is a powerful force and does not require a union.
2. Leaders who connect with their staff on a very personal level can engender incredible loyalty and trust.
3. At the end of the day, the heart and soul of any organization are it’s staff.
4. Customers do pay close attention to how employees are being treated.
5. Great leaders don’t focus strictly on the bottom line because they understand employee loyalty is priceless.
Are you the kind of boss that your staff would fight for? It is a good but scary question that every nurse leader should ask themselves. This is a remarkable story on many levels that all leaders can learn from.
Read to Lead
Artie T returns to Market Basket – You Tube
© emergingrnleader.com 2014
LinkedIn
Instagram