I’ve been searching for the word that best encapsulates the change in Wegmans, pre- and post-coronavirus.
How have perceptions been altered by the company’s response to the pandemic?
The word trust comes to mind, certainly. Although Wegmans maintains a loyal and enthusiastic customer base, many of us trust the company less today than we did at the end of 2019.
Reliability is another. I’m surprised at the company’s resistance to masks, at its slowness to adopt safety measures such as limiting the number of shoppers.
And there’s uncommunicative. As a top-down operation with tiers of middle management and thousands of part-time workers, Wegmans has never been great at communication. In recent weeks, the trait has come to the fore in the failure to report the number and location of employees testing positive for COVID-19.
But none of these terms fully captures the shift in identity.
I consider the company’s profile before the world turned upside down. The colorful produce section, the video presentations on how to prepare healthful meals, the motto, “food you feel good about,” the company’s Wholesum brand of snack bars, launched in 2015.
That’s it.
Wholesome. I used to think of Wegmans as wholesome, not only in the food it sold but in its treatment of employees and customers, in its family ownership, in the frequency with which Danny Wegman and other family members strolled through the stores.
The corporate persona must have morphed even before the virus struck. It’s probably impossible for an enterprise that has grown to 101 stores in seven states to maintain the warm and caring culture it embraced when it was just a local operation.
If anything has become clear in recent weeks, it’s that the focus is now on profit.
Perhaps it is naive to expect otherwise. But that has been the drumbeat for decades. Internally, in videos, postings and signs, Wegmans still insists, “You remain our #1 priority!”
The company has taken many steps to enforce social distancing and heighten already strict standards of cleanliness.
It is giving workers what amounts to hazard pay of $2 extra per hour in March and April. But the sum isn’t a raise. It’s a temporary increase aimed at keeping people coming to work during difficult times.
And yes, the company decided recently to allow workers to wear masks. But this move followed weeks of banning the practice. And even after the change in policy, the message from on high discouraged mask use.
Why? I’ve no idea.
Is Wegmans actually concerned that masked employees will frighten the customers, most of whom are wearing masks? Maybe masks don’t fit the old wholesome image. Maybe masks might hurt the bottom line. Maybe the spelling of Wholesum was a Freudian slip.
As a fellow employee I enjoy your updates and agree. Wegmans was very reactive to the whole situation not proactive. This was disturbing to me. Also, for a place that pushes the whole “best places to work” idea all the time, what have they done that has exemplified that during this crisis? They are doing the exact same things as other retailers, sometimes less, and often day/weeks behind other retailers. The $2 bonus to work is ok but most other grocers are doing something similar and as you said, it’s basically just a bribe to make sure stores are staffed, not because they want to reward us for anything. Also, after taxes are taken out I barely got $200 for 160+ hours of work. All to put my life and my families life at risk. Word among most employees is they are dissapointed in the way wegmans has handled everything with this and unless they do something big in the next few weeks I think you will see a lot of very valuable employees leave the company. At the very least I would doubt wegmans will be among the best places to work list for 2020
They will be on the list because they pay for the opportunity to be on it
Danny left, that is the biggest difference. I have noticed (as a customer) a real difference in some major areas since “Danny” completely left operations . The new crew in charge (with Colleen) just doesn’t have “it” yet.
Maybe Wegman’s ought to slow it’s expansion a little to fully “enculturate” managers and employees that DID NOT GROW UP with Wegman’s, Much of the “difference” was not that Wegman’s was/is a “cult” but that Wegman’s did somethings different, and did many other things BETTER.