National Post (National Edition)
BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO ITS CULTURE
EMPIRE & SOBEYS INC.
SOBEYS HAS CULTIVATED A STRONGER, MORE DELIBERATE CORPORATE CULTURE TO REINVIGORATE A SENSE OF FAMILY AMONG TEAMMATES. EVERY DAY THEY EMULATE OUR CORE VALUES, FOSTERING A CULTURE OF COLLABORATION,
TRUST AND EXCELLENCE IN EVERY STORE, DISTRIBUTION CENTRE AND OFFICE. — MICHAEL MEDLINE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, EMPIRE COMPANY LIMITED AND SOBEYS INC.
When Michael Medline took over the reins of Empire and Sobeys Inc. in 2017, he saw an opportunity for change. The company had grown to the point where the business operations were fragmented and siloed. His first step was to bring the leadership team together to launch a threeyear plan called Project Sunrise to rebuild the culture of care, trust and respect that has defined Sobeys’ legacy for more than a century.
It was no small task for the winner in the Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures Enterprise category. The Stellarton, N.S.based company has 127,000 employees, a vast majority of which work on the front lines in more than 1,500 branded locations, including Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, Farm Boy, Lawton’s Drug Stores and ecommerce brand Voilà, with more to come.
Project Sunrise was a sweeping effort that involved opening communications between previously siloed parts of the business, restructuring operations, and empowering business leaders to execute strategic decisions based on innovation and growth.
It also incorporated the ideas of more than 500 employees (a.k.a. teammates), who were asked to elaborate on company values that supported its culture and strategy. Together, the leaders and teammates drafted values that reflect the Sobeys culture at its best.
These were: a customer-driven focus, a people-powered workplace that cultivates care, trust and respect for teammates, community engagement in the communities it serves, and a results-oriented approach to delivering great business outcomes with passion and integrity.
“Through Sunrise, Sobeys has cultivated a stronger, more deliberate corporate culture to reinvigorate a sense of family among teammates,” Medline says. “Every day they emulate our core values, fostering a culture of collaboration, trust and excellence in every store, distribution centre and office.”
Sobeys also articulated an Employee Value Proposition, outlining the pillars that help inspire teammates: Stand Together (Support), Be Our Best (Thrive), Realize our Potential (Grow), and Make a Difference (Contribute).
As highly valued contributors, teammates at all levels are encouraged to submit ideas to help reinforce its values. Many of those ideas have been adopted throughout the organization. Employee input was responsible for policies such as the establishment of sensory-friendly shopping and, more recently, senior shopping hours during the pandemic.
During the COVID-19 crisis, a teammate at Safeway Bonavista store in Calgary created a poster with the message “Tough times don’t last. Tough teams do” — a slogan that became the company’s rallying cry for 2020.
The revitalized culture fostered through Project Sunrise proved instrumental in Sobeys’ industry-leading response during the pandemic, as it encouraged collaboration between teams at all levels to collaborate and make quick, strategic operational decisions.
“Project Sunrise was a groundbreaking transformation, which helped us tackle the pandemic while also delivering on ambitious, industry-leading initiatives,” Medline says.
The executive team led by example, staying personally connected with teammates, sending words of encouragement and thanks to staff members through face-toface meetings with store managers and operators, virtual town halls, surveys, conference calls, the intranet (“The Market”), private employee-only social media groups, store newsletters, and letters and videos from leaders, among others.
“Teammates worked tirelessly to ensure safe work environments and to help communities in need, driven by a shared purpose,” says Simon Gagné, chief human resources officer. “The health and safety of teammates was the number one priority from the get-go. If we did not instill a sense of security in our workforce, it would have been impossible to serve Canadians.”
The executive team drew inspiration from models used around the world, Gagné explains. “We learned from best practices being leveraged in Europe and China who had already had established protocols in place. We also hired 32,000 new people to help keep operations going smoothly.”
As with all its recruitment efforts, careful consideration was given to Sobeys’ family culture of care, trust and respect, despite the volume of hires. “It is important that teammates are driven by a shared purpose,” Gagné says.
This is nothing new to the Sobeys culture. Throughout the organization, talent specialists support diverse career journeys, seeking candidates that display accountability in their action, a desire to drive innovation, and passion for the company’s core values.
The company prides itself on recruiting from within, especially among storelevel employees. In 2018, it launched NourishU, a 90day apprenticeship program designed to identify and develop the careers of teammates with management potential and grow leaders in areas such as collaboration, innovation and culture.
Sobeys also boasts a long-standing reputation for its diversity, equity and inclusion practices, embedding measures into its performance metrics and monitoring progress through quarterly scorecards. A recent example is its pledge to the BlackNorth Initiatives, which asks businesses across Canada to pledge specific actions and targets towards ending anti-Black systemic racism.
Other performance-encouraging resources include annual awards and recognition programs, flexible work arrangements, and career development, as well as diversity and inclusion networks and leadership training.
In fiscal 2020, Sobeys garnered four STAR Women in Grocery awards, the greatest number of recipients from any organization. The same year it received the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion’s Employer Initiative of the Year award for its Sensory-Friendly Shopping program.
Corporate responsibility is another important pillar within the Sobeys culture. “In 2020, we looked deeply at how our community investment, including our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that drive tangible social and organizational change, supported our company purpose of being a family nurturing families,” Medline explains.
From that exercise, Sobeys reinforced its CSR commitments through three key action pillars: people (investment in community-based nutrition and meal programs and working to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce); products (sharing stories of hundreds of local vendors in stores across Canada); and environmental commitments and actions, which include eliminating single-use plastic bags, among other efforts.
Significant community partnerships include Special Olympics Canada, where Sobeys has donated more than $4.1 million in food and funds since 2016. The Grocery Foundation/Toonies for Tummies has provided 448,000 healthy meals to school-aged children in Ontario and Western Canada. The company has donated millions of meals to food banks in 900 communities across Canada in 2020 alone. Other partners are the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, Pride at Work Canada, and Stronger Together Nova Scotia.
The Community Action Fund launched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic directly empowers frontline teammates from coast to coast to address their communities’ most urgent needs during the crisis. Recipients have included food banks, women’s shelters, and school meal programs.
“We believe it’s far more powerful and personal to put funds into teammates’ hands, because they know their communities best,” Medline says. “Thanks to their engagement, we injected millions of dollars into local communities from coast to coast.”
The achievements since the launch of Project Sunrise and beyond could only have been made possible by a culture that had embraced change, innovation and growth, Gagné notes. “People are really connecting with our sense of purpose and our values. We can see that in every decision they make. We will always be grateful for the trust they put in us. We could not be able to get through this crisis without them.”
“If you think back to the fragmented, regionally-structured company we were three and a half years ago, there is no way we would have been able to navigate the pandemic this well,” Medline says. “Today, we are truly a national organization — we are one winning team.”
PEOPLE ARE REALLY CONNECTING WITH OUR SENSE OF PURPOSE AND OUR VALUES. WE CAN SEE THAT IN EVERY DECISION THEY MAKE. WE WILL ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL FOR
THE TRUST THEY PUT IN US.