Foodstuffs launches leadership training academy for senior management

The leadership qualities of aspiring supermarket owner-operators and senior managers are being recognised and developed with the recent launch of the Foodstuffs Academy in Wellington.

Foodstuffs Wellington, the lower North Island supermarket cooperative, launched its specialised training programme on Tuesday July 7 at Meetings on The Terrace in Wellington to groom senior management as future leaders of the industry.

Foodstuffs Wellington Chairman Brian Drake said a professional development programme tailor-made for supermarket leadership was needed to take the cooperative into the future. Foodstuffs contracted leading business trainer David Forman to design a programme directly aligned to Foodstuffs’ business objectives.

Twenty-three senior store and head office managers are involved in the inaugural programme which will have eight three-day modules over two years. Modules include Leadership for the 21st Century, Self-Leadership and Personal Effectiveness, Understanding and Driving the Customer Experience, and Building High-Performing Teams.

Foodstuffs Wellington has 25 major development and refurbishment projects on the go or in planning in the lower North Island.

Mr Drake said large supermarkets were like mini-cities under one roof: “We need key staff and future owner-operators for the number of stores we are going to open, many with staff of up to 350 and departments that are businesses in their own right.”

He told the senior managers they needed a vision of the store they could one day own: “You can achieve it if you set yourself goals. It could take five to 20 years to get there so you need to look at both short and long-term goals.”

Much knowledge could be gained from people who had been in the industry a long time. Aspiring owners also needed to keep up with overseas lifestyle trends and people’s food preferences, monitoring the strength, for example, of the organic food trend, he said.

Foodstuffs conducts two-yearly study tours which this year travelled to the United States and Canada. Mr Drake said it revealed that the latest supermarket interior designs in New Zealand were up with the best internationally. Examples were Hastings and Greenmeadows New Worlds in Hawke’s Bay.

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast officially opened the Foodstuffs Academy, remarking that Foodstuffs and Wellington City Council were thinking along the same lines. They were not retreating into a shell in the face of economic uncertainty but were investing and thinking creatively for the future.

Owner-operators Leo O’Sullivan (Petone Pak’nSave) and Karl Marryatt (Wellington Railway Metro New World) joined Pak’nSave Group Manager Mike Walshe in passing on lessons learned from their years in the industry, from their start in tasks like trimming cabbages to their climb up the corporate ladder.

They identified hard work, persistence, determination to succeed, integrity and not being afraid to ask for advice among the many key factors in their success. The most important asset, however, was hiring and nurturing staff with positive attitudes, sharing ideas, providing training incentives and creating a strong team spirit.

Mr O’Sullivan said, “In Petone, we praise our people as much as possible and when they muck up, we tell them. Remember, what you ignore, you approve. You train the staff; you set the standard. If you want them to pick rubbish off the floor and say hello to customers, you have to do it, too. I believe your staff works with you and you work for them. The better they get, the more you make. I try and lead from the front.”

ENDS

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