Case Study 6 – C-Store Shift Supervisor Leadership Development Program

One of the fastest growing, family-owned convenience stores in the nation, with more than $4B in sales, 350+ locations across six states, and 12,000+ employees launches a Shift Supervisor Leadership Development program.

The challenge:

Our client had been experiencing some growing pains as they expanded into other states. The further the store was from their corporate offices and original locations the longer it took to make those stores profitable. They also found that they were losing some of the cultural features that distinguished the home state stores from those in other states.

The solution:

Five Star partnered with our client’s training staff to create leadership development sessions as part of a 19-day Shift Supervisor curriculum. In total Five Star developed 5-days of leadership development workshops to prepare leaders to:

• Communicate and reinforce the client’s vision and mission
• Provide effective and efficient on-the-job training
• Increase new employee development and retention with effective coaching and feedback skills
• Use effective delegation and empowerment techniques to insure “speed of service” and “total customer focus”
• Build trust-based partnerships with store employees and suppliers

Five Star provided the client with master files for all participant materials, workshop teaching aids and detailed facilitator guides. These learning sessions used innovative techniques like “What’s On Your Radar” video exercises where learners watched real video footage of stores to determine what was correct and what needed corrected in the store. Their actions included how they would coach and provide feedback and use delegation with employees based on their observations. There was also an application simulation on day 19 of this program that pulled on their learning together in a final exam exercise.

Results:

The ultimate assessment of the effectiveness of this training was the speed in which new stores achieved performance goals. The client has reported that the four test stores achieved required performance goals in a much shorter time frame than stores that were opened with the previous training processes.

The client is now using the leadership sessions to train existing store managers in all of their existing stores. The leadership development sessions are now a permanent part of the all new shift supervisor training.