Q. Congratulations on winning a People Report Best Practices Award for the third year in a row! What does the award mean to you and your team?

It is a great honor for our team to be recognized among so many industry leaders.  It acknowledges our dedication and hard work to creating a dynamic workplace.
 
Q. As the first company to ever win the Best Practices Award for three consecutive years, what do you attribute your success to? What keeps you balancing people and profits so well?
 
Our operations and Home Office leadership teams are dedicated to creating and keeping our people culture.  We are committed to a good quality of life, competitive pay and benefits for our team.  We believe that having a balance, happy workforce is the cornerstone to our success in creating a financially successful brand that provides growth opportunities.
 
Q. What are some of the best practices at Corner Bakery Cafe that really make a difference in your results?

• Succession planning – everyone knows where they stand and what they need to do to progress in their career. This is at all levels of the organization and all team members are held accountable to coaching and developing their people.  Some great tools that we have to facilitate this process are:
  1. Timely performance assessments.
  2. Monthly one on ones meetings with supervisors
  3. Training programs to assist in their development.
  4. Consistent feedback.
• We live the open door policy – actively ensuring that our employees are able to talk to all levels of the organization and voice their concerns and opinions. 
• Having a clear Corner Bakery Cafe mission, vision and values to guide our decisions with people and driving the concept forward.  Our team knows what to expect.
• Recruiting strategy is broad based – we actively seek a wide variety of backgrounds and talents to complement our teams.
• A Managing Partner Program that reward our tenured and high performing General Managers.
• We care about our people. We take the time to get to know them personally and professionally.  We celebrate successes (both personally and professionally).  We work to help them find a balance between work and home.  We understand that everyone has different needs – part time, full time, mothers, students, single parents, and people of all ages and backgrounds- there is a place for everyone.
• We hold each other accountable to keeping our people – when someone leaves the organization we take it personally.  We discuss why they left, could we have done something to keep them within the organization, what will we do differently next time.  We also do exit interviews to gain further understanding from our departing employees.

Q. With all the success you have experienced, what continues to be a challenge? What keeps you up at night?
 
Finding and developing the talent to fill our pipeline for our continued growth.  Continuing to build the infrastructure within our team to support Corner Bakery Cafe today and in the future.
 
Thank you for your time Denise!