Building a culture of opportunity, DG promotes advancement goals

Bob Ravener, EVP and chief people officer, Dollar General

If any U.S. retail company understands the importance of selling not just its product, but also the experience of consuming that product in its stores, that company is Starbucks. The Seattle-based king of coffee excels at hiring friendly, motivated and upbeat sales people to help create the relaxed, refuge-from-the-world atmosphere that sets Starbucks apart and keeps customers coming back.

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So whom did Dollar General turn to when filling the key post of SVP and chief people officer during the management change launched in 2008? Veteran Starbucks executive Bob Ravener. That choice speaks volumes about the cultural transformation that continues to resonate at the Tennessee-based discount chain.



Ravener, who has since been promoted to executive VP at Dollar General, oversaw all aspects of human resources activity as SVP of U.S. partner resources at Starbucks prior to joining Dollar General. He also worked as VP of human resources for The Home Depot and gained prior executive experience at PepsiCo and Footstar. And one thing common to all those companies, he told DSN, was the need to foster a culture that can “nurture growth and development” of their employees.



“You’ve got to create the right environment so that they’ll get up every morning feeling that ‘This is the place I want to go to work everyday,’” Ravener asserted. “You can have all the great policies and procedures in the world, but if you don’t have great people, you’re not going to succeed.”



Despite the obvious differences in retail channels, said the HR executive, “People are people. They have the same goals, ambitions and desires.”



Very high on that list of goals is the desire to succeed and advance, “from the entry level sales associate all the way up to the executive recruiting that we do,” said Ravener. “We know that people have choices. So we’ve tried to create a career culture. If someone can start anywhere in our organization and feel like they can have their own career goals and aspirations met here, that’s success for us.”



With that in mind, Dollar General established a formal program of internal placement goals in 2010. “We really made it a priority to establish metrics for internal growth,” Ravener explained. To develop new store managers from its own ranks, for instance, “We historically had low internal placements and set a stretch goal of 50% in 2010, and now over 60% of our store managers are promoted from within, which has helped us nurture that career culture mindset.”



That compares with just 20% of store managers promoted from within in 2008, when CEO Rick Dreiling took the management reins and began a companywide overhaul. The same goes for Dollar General’s district managers, more than 60% of whom are drawn directly from store management.



Said Ravener, “You create the right environment, develop them to excel, and give them room to grow.”



To that end, Dollar General has invested heavily in training, including the creation of leadership development programs to foster employee motivation and advancement. “We established what we call training development centers, or assessment centers, just a few years ago,” said Ravener. “Anybody who gets promoted to district manager today has to go through this assessment center. It’s the same thing for district managers. Before they get promoted to regional director, they have to go through that assessment center.”



That deliberate and detailed process, said Ravener, both gauges the readiness of the candidate and helps his human resources team “build development plans to help the participants accelerate their growth and development.”



The development process also encourages mentoring relationships between district managers, store managers and store employees interested in promotion.



 Ravener credits “the cultural shift with Rick’s leadership” for the change. “In the past, people were hired to do the job. But we’ve always brought people into the organization with an eye on what they can do next, and how we can help them get there. It’s about building a very robust succession plan process.”



The company also presents itself to prospective entry-level employees as a starting point to begin employment. “For people entering the work force for the first time, Dollar General stores provide an ideal foundation of basic work skills along with competitive wages and benefits,” the company noted on its website.



What qualities does Dollar General now look for in new employees? Beyond hiring honest people with a good work ethic, much of the search for store staff revolves around attitude and people skills. “There’s no substitute for ‘happy,’” said Ravener. “It has always been part of the Starbucks strategy. If you think about it, the Starbucks product is good, but what people remember about the experience is the people serving in that environment. So overall, attitude is number one. Then it comes down to a few other core attributes. If people are honest, work hard, are dependable, and have great attitudes ... they can go as far as their aspirations take them.”



For Dollar General, establishing a clear, goal-oriented track for advancement isn’t just a feel-good exercise to motivate employees or improve the corporate culture. With the company opening an average of nearly two new stores every day somewhere in the United States, the need for a steady stream of new, capable store managers is critical.



The advancement opportunities are obvious. “I think retailing in general is one of the last places where people don’t need advanced degrees and all this specialized training to move up — where they can bring their core set of skills and start from the bottom and work their way to the top,” said Ravener. “For people in our organization, if you start at a junior-level sales associate, you can be a ... store manager in two or three years. So, with the desire and right skills, you can be running a million-plus-dollar business in a very short period of time.”



“We’re a performance-driven culture,” he added. “We communicate that we are always looking for people to take that next step and the company has now developed a pipeline that is helping sustain growth well into the future.”