Technology Helps Kroger Hire the Right Talent

No matter the business, having the right people is critical to its success (or failure). For Kroger, a national supermarket chain with a workforce of 400,000, that's easier said than done.

In a brief TED Talks-style presentation yesterday at the SAP Retail Forum in Miami Beach, Dawn Gilmore, manager of talent and performance development at Kroger, discussed how the retailer has transformed its talent acquisition efforts with the help of technology from SAP.

Prior to working with SAP, Kroger was in the dark ages when it came to its talent management efforts – it was using spreadsheets for its roughly 400,000 store employees. Clearly that was unsustainable, Gilmore said. So Kroger embarked on a companywide initiative to re-evaluate and improve upon its talent development strategy.

Internally at Kroger, the initiative is referred to as Our Journey: Know, Build, Recruit. Gilmore detailed each step in the journey, and how technology is helping the retailer accomplish it.

• Know: How do we get to know our 400,000 associates, what their skills are, what their goals are, Gilmore said of Kroger's first steps in developing its strategy. With that information, the retailer can then begin to build profiles of each individual.
• Build: Kroger is now building out career paths for its associates based on their expertise and how those skills are aligned with Kroger's strategic growth strategy, Gilmore said.
• Recruit: With easier access to the profiles of its associates, Kroger is able to identify what skills it lacks in its workforce and therefore needs to recruit, either from within or externally.

The “Know Me” platform as Kroger refers to it internally is broken down into three phases: one, creating associate profiles, two, tracking performance and compensation planning, and three, recruitment.

It's truly been a collaborative effort to transform a workforce of nearly 400,000 associates, Gilmore noted.