{"id":3097,"date":"2016-04-08T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T05:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2021-11-26T16:16:35","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T10:46:35","slug":"publix-deserves-a-standing-ovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/08\/publix-deserves-a-standing-ovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Publix Deserves A Standing Ovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

You generally give standing ovations to speeches, concerts and other live events.<\/p>\n

On one occasion, I literally stood up and clapped after reading a book (it was\u00a0“Gods of Guilt” by Michael Connelly<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>if you wish to know).<\/p>\n

But it’s unheard of to compliment magazine articles with a standing ovation.<\/p>\n

But that’s what I did when I read the article titled\u00a0My Five Days of ‘Bleeding Green’<\/a><\/strong> in a recent issue of FORTUNE magazine.\u00a0While the article was very well-written, it was its subject that stirred me.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Publix.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Florida-based retailer has been ranked 67th in the magazine’s list of “Top 100 Best Companies to Work For”<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned the year of the list, it will become clear in a moment.<\/p>\n

Written by Christopher Tkaczyk<\/a>, the article chronicled the author’s experience of being “embedded” for five days in a Publix store in Lake Nona, a suburb of Orlando, Florida.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I admired most about Publix:<\/p>\n

\"publix07\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. SIZE: Publix is big – FORTUNE 100 sorta big (it’s ranked 101 to be precise). It’s the largest employee-owned company in the world.<\/li>\n
  2. FOCUS: Publix has reached its size with a presence in merely six US states.<\/li>\n
  3. CONSISTENCY: The retailer has been on the “Top 100 Best Companies To Work For” list every year<\/em> since Fortune<\/em> started publishing the list in 1998.<\/li>\n
  4. HUMANENESS:\u00a0Publix has never laid off a single employee<\/em> in its 86-year history.<\/li>\n
  5. CULT-LIKE CULTURE: Publix enjoys a level of employee loyalty that others – in or out of the retail industry – can only dream about. Compared to the retail industry’s average attrition rate of 65%, Publix’s attrition rate is only 5%. This is astounding in an industry where, according to a friend who works as a CxO of a pioneering retailer, employees change jobs for a mere salary hike of US$ 10 per month.<\/li>\n
  6. MERITOCRACY: Anyone can reach any level in Publix: Its soon-to-be CEO Todd Jones started out bagging groceries at the company 36 years ago.<\/li>\n
  7. CONTRARIAN: Publix shatters the myth – proliferated by self-serving financial advisors, I suspect – that the longer you hold a stock, the greater your return will be.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I once stumbled into a Miami-based Publix store a few years ago. I never knew the company’s street cred at the time. I’ll be sure to look out for a Publix whenever I’m next in its neighborhood.<\/p>\n

    \"publix06\"<\/a>
    The shorter you held a Publix stock, the greater was your return!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I’m not alone in my adulation of Publix. \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of company I\u2019d like to buy,\u201d Warren Buffett recently told Fortune<\/i>. \u201cIt has a terrific record in a very, very, very tough industry. There\u2019s a certain amount of magic down there in terms of running the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

    There are times when you hear about a company and impulsively wish that you’d built one like it – or at least worked there. Publix is one such company.<\/p>\n

    But, on most of those occasions, you also have a nagging doubt about whether people who actually work there share your feelings. (I’m looking at employees of Oracle, Microsoft and Tesla.)<\/p>\n

    There are no such undercurrents in the case of Publix.<\/p>\n

    As Alan Veith, the manager of the store in which the author was embedded for the week, says at the conclusion of the article,<\/p>\n

    \u201cI can\u2019t imagine a life better than the one I\u2019m living, thanks to Publix.\u201d<\/p>\n

    You can’t get a better endorsement than that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    You generally give standing ovations to speeches, concerts and other live events. On one occasion, I literally stood up and clapped after reading a book (it was\u00a0“Gods of Guilt” by Michael Connelly\u00a0if you wish to know). But it’s unheard of to compliment magazine articles with a standing ovation. But that’s what I did when I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retail","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8706,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions\/8706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}