Muhammad Khan D # 01632549 HR 598 Compensation Case Study # 1

Job Evaluation at Whole Foods Market Introduction The main ambition of any firm is to draw and retain employees that share their core values. Whole Foods Core Values talk about providing their customers with the highest quality natural and organic products, which in turn keeps their customers happy, providing support to their Team Members (Whole Food Employees), resulting in both prosperity and harmony happiness and growth, creating wealth via profits and growth, caring about the communities as well as the environment, going for win-win partnerships with their suppliers and promoting the health of their stakeholders through quality healthy eating education. Im going to take these very core values and use them for the job analysis and prepared job descriptions while striving to determine the job structure at Whole Foods. Evaluation of Jobs and Job Structure While looking at the job descriptions provided in the case study, I assigned job titles in the following way: Job A- Prepared Foods Team Member Job B- Customer Service Team Member Job C- Prepared Foods Department Team Leader

Job D- Prepared Foods Supervisor Job E- Dishwasher Job F-Customer Service Front End Supervisor Job G- Prepared Foods Associate Team Leader Job H- Associate Store Team Leader Job I-Grocery Retail Team Member The job structure that I eventually came up with classified the above jobs into two categories: Managerial and Store Support. In the Managerial structure I grouped Job C, Job D, Job F, Job G and Job H together while in the Store Support I put Job A, Job B, Job E, and Job I together. Process, Techniques and Factors The Job evaluation technique I chose to use in my case study was the job ranking method. You might question my choice. My reason for choosing this technique was quite simple. While browsing the Whole Foods website and their career paths page, I discovered that the job opportunities in every store appeared to be hierarchal in nature. Although Whole Foods itself is quite a large corporation, as per the information on the company website, there are under thirty different job classifications. While this

is the most uncomplicated method of job evaluation, Whole Foods itself has placed the jobs in a specific order, ranging from the highest, Store Team Leaders, Facility Team Leaders, Regional Presidents, and Presidents at the top and Team Members or Specialized Team Members at the lowest or entry level. The compensable factors that I made use of in determining these job rankings based on the job descriptions were job responsibility, skill, knowledge and ability. While Whole Foods does have various departments in their stores, with unique job requirements, these types of jobs may be clumped into one classification and put into a prearranged grade. What I mean to say is that a Team Member in Bakery has the basic skills and knowledge as a Team Member in Meat. Although the departments may be different, bakery versus meat, the responsibilities and qualifications at the Whole Foods are the same. Outstanding customer service as well as maintenance of the departments theyre working for are only a few that come to mind. Whole Foods as a single unit is a team focused towards achieving a working environment, hence placing more value on one job versus another would go against their core values. This however cannot be taken to believe that there wont be different pay scales based on the persons position in the hierarchy; it simply means that a difference in salary is not something that makes one person more important than another.

As per their own company website, Whole Foods seek individuals who believe in their mission of Whole Foods, Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet-people who are enthusiastic about food and our products, and who want to join a culture of shared fate (Whole FoodsMarket.com). Hence, individuals who work for Whole Food understand that theyre an asset and are well aware of their worth and value. In addition to this, with the training and development programs thatre offered, any person can easily work his way up and earn a promotion to a higher level with the experience, knowledge and skills that theyve obtained in their positions. Evaluation of Job Descriptions Im of the opinion that the job descriptions in this case study could use a lot more structure. I found it extremely hard to comprehend some of the information within the job description. Even after extensive study of the WholeFoodsMarket.com website for comparison purpose, I had to struggle with assigning job titles to some of the descriptions. While the job descriptions themselves did have most of the information needed to aid a person in placing a job title with the description, they could have been much better written. The job descriptions provided did not give a very general position overview which, I believe would have been helpful. For instance, for Job A, the position overview could have listed some of the tasks the job has. The following is taken from the Prepared Foods Team Member position

description under the position overview: Performs in the Prepared Food Department all of the following tasks: preparation, counter service, sanitation and stocking of products. Maintains a positive company image by providing courteous, friendly, and efficient Customer Service. Supports team leader and regional coordinator in training and maintaining regional standards.

(WholeFoodsMarket.com) In place of mentioning all of the job duties under Kind of Work, listing them out in a responsibilities section would have made it much easier for the reader. The requirements sections were adequate though. Listing out the reporting structure for each position, again would have been helpful. I had to tally all information available on the job descriptions with the actual job descriptions on the Whole Foods Market website, a tedious and hectic process which couldve bee n made much simpler with a better layout. The knowledge, skills and abilities required for each job shouldve been listed in its own section for a proper job description. Having all these been readily available, assigning job titles would have been a much smoother process.

Conclusion This being my first attempt at assigning job titles and job structure, I found it to be quite a challenging task. When you do not have the best job descriptions available to you, nor the opportunity to job shadow a person in the position, you come to realize that a lot of work needs to be done at the front end, beginning with collection, integration and lastly summarization of all the job information for each position at a company. Once all the possible information needed to complete a proper job description is in ones hand, a compensation specialist can properly determine the value of the job, assess the relative value of the job and place it in a job structure that is both clear and concise to all stakeholders. (Milovic, Newman and Gearhart) This case study made me realize what a lot of problems can be created when things are not handled properly in the very beginning.

References http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/. Whole Foods Market http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/values/corevalues.php. Whole Foods Market core values http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/careers/index.php. careers Milkovich, Newman and Gerhart. Compensation, 10th Edition Whole Foods Marker