Introduction
Every human resources department in any organizations will undergo the process of training and development of its employees. This process is one of the significant process that organizations must do in order to let their employees be trained in as for them to encounter the real situation in accomplish their job. Hiring the right people means more than just securing employees who possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to perform a particular job; these people must also be able to acquire new knowledge and skills as jobs and environments change,”(Dreher & Dougherty, 2001).
One of the well-known and famous company that have succeed in business as the result of well trained workers is Wegman Food Markets. Wegman Food Market become famous and widely respected in the industry not only because of their success in sales volume but also because of their success in training their workers. This is due to the fact that many observers believe that the big reasons why the company stands out is because the training of the employees. Satisfaction was clearly shown in the customer face whenever they step out from the Wegman Food Market as they are happy buying and serve well by the workers.
Wegman Food Market is a regional supermarket chain headquartered in Rochester, New York which is one of the top 75 United Stated supermarkets. The company was privately held and is a family-owned company started in 1916 by the Wegman Family. Robert Wegman is the chairman until his death in April 2006. Currently, Robert’s son Danny Wegman is holding the position as CEO of the company and Collen Wegman, Danny’s daughter is the president of the company. For this year, Wegmans Food Market are listed in third place in the Fortune “100 best company to work for”. Although it falls to the third places ranked behind Google Inc. and Genetech Inc. in 2007, but it holds the first place for a long period previously and still retained in the list till today starting from 1988 as the best retail employer in the United Stated.
In order to ensure the employees of Wegmans Food Market be trained excellently, Wegman Food Market Human Resources department must first ensure that they are hiring the right people that will provide the customers with superior customer service and commit to implementing the knowledge they receive during training. Wegmans organizational strategy is for the employees to understand sales and competing on the basis of quality and service. Wegman Food Market uses hands on training throughout their stores, to provide the employees with an opportunity to experience making the products themselves. “Training content includes practical matters such as product knowledge, food safety, and the ways to cook and bake,” (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2009, p. 209) fits the organizational needs of the Wegman Food Markets. This company also always holding to its philosophy which is “Employees first, Customers second”. Although this philosophy looks like a very big investment, but Wegmans believe that if employees happy, customer will happy too.
The company has won dozens of awards and distinctions for making the shopping experience better, and for treating customers, employees, and communities in an exemplary manner. One of the best awards that related to this case study is that the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) names Danny Wegman the 2005 Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance in June 2005. Besides of listed in Fortune’s magazine for the “100 Best Company to Work For”, Wegmans also named in the book “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” a book by Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, in a national selection of best employers in1993. In addition, Dale Carnegie Training gives Wegmans the Dale Carnegie Leadership Award, for its exceptional customer service, development of their people (and) demonstrated dedication to the philosophy and core values (Wegmans) was founded on, September 2010. Working Mother also names Wegmans to the list of the Best Companies for Working Mothers nationwide, for six consecutive years in 1990 until 1995. They are still many awards achieve by Wegmans for their excellence in community services and excellence in retailer.
Wegmans Food Market also conducts a youth apprenticeship program with about 250 people in it each year. They take on a team project on some aspect of a department they are working in.They study it for five months and then give presentations. The kids are learning and realizing how they can make a difference.

Question 1
How is training at Wegmans related to its organizational needs?
According to Dreher and Dougherty, 2001, hiring the right people means more than just securing employees who possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to perform a particular jobs; theses people must also be able to acquire new knowledge and skills as jobs and environments change. It is certain that every training program is somehow related to the needs of the company. Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies as the outcomes of the teaching of practical skills. The need to continue training beyond the initial qualification is to upgrade and update skills throughout working life.
Wegmans do train their employees through classroom session, as to see the attitudes and behaviours of the trainees. However, rather than focuses only on face-to-face meeting like that, Wegmans feels that the trainees should be adapted in normal working condition. Thus, more than fifty-percent of the training conducted will be the on-the-job training as it is believed to be the most effective method for vocational works. The trainees of Wegmans will be using the actual tools, equipments, documents, or any other materials that usually will be used once the trainees are fully trained.
The issue here is how does the training at Wegmans related to its organizational needs, and to answer this question the goals of Wegmans itself are concerned. The main goal of Wegmans is to be committed to the community. As one of the major corporate contributors in communities, Wegmans focuses on these five areas which are serves food for the needy, strengthening neighborhoods, helping young people succeed, healthy eating and activity, and support for the United Way as an effective way to fund programs that make a difference, to achieve their ultimate goal.
In order to achieve the organizational goals, especially in giving a superior customer service and great performances, Wegmans shall train the right people with the right skills to really implement the knowledge they receive during training. Wegmans organizational strategy is for the employees to “understand the sales and competing on the basis of quality and service,” (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhat, & Wright, 2009, p. 209). As the contents of the training includes the practical matters such as product knowledge, food safety, and the ways to cook and bake, the lessons learned shall be the assets the trainees will share with the customers as Wegmans offers an example of “ if a customer doesn’t know how to cook a recipe, no matter how cheap it is, it does not do any good to buy it”,. With the knowledge gain regarding the products and sales is consistent with the company’s goal in serving the customers well.
In conclusion, the training at Wegmans is related to the company’s needs as a regional supermarket chain who offers more customer convenience services and “stores within a store” than possibly any other supermarket chain.

Question 2
How does Wegmans measure the success of its training?
Since 1931, Wegman Food Market store’s sale up to $1.64 billion where at that time the company have only 18, 000 employees. Then, today sales amounted to $5.6 billion in the year of 2010 with 42, 000 employees has proved that this company gains much profit rather than loss. Moreover, the company list of Top 75 Supermarkets based on the sales volume. In regard with the profit gained through sales, the Wegman Food Market executive has measure the success of the company training is through the increase of sales and satisfaction of customer towards the service given by Wegman employees. This is because, an employee has been trained not only to serves the product to the customer but also they will share their knowledge on how to prepare or cook the product. This way is so-called providing good value to customer while selling product. So, it increases the customer demand to buy any product in Wegmans. As said, “Wegmans measures the success of its training based on whether a store’s sales are growing. In fact, sales and profit growth are primary ways the company measures the performance of the company’s director of training and development,” (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2009). Hence, motivate the company to create the best training which profitable to the business.
What other measures might be important?
-Training approach As Wegmans really care of giving the excellent service to the customers, the organization will include in the training approach on how those trainees should behave towards the superior customer. Therefore, training must be made in the situation where both trainer and trainees are face-to-face so that they can have influence exchange in term of attitudes and behaviors in order to convey the right values to serve the customers. Meaning to say that, employees will share their experience directly to trainees by showing them the best way on how they should serve the customers. As an example, on-the-job learning where trainees has been trained by employees who work at the same time so that they can clearly see what they should do within the company. According to CEO Danny Wegman that, “We’re food business, so learning with five sense is important to us.” As a result, when Wegmans employees show new positive attitude while doing their job and giving the best customer service, it enable the executive measure how effective the company training is.
-Training content Apart from that, it is important to have useful content while have a training for the practical purposes such as product knowledge, food safety, and the ways to cook and bake. It means that, after training is done, those trainees able to perform well regarding to the job that has been taught by the experience employees while run the training program. Besides, they know how to apply their skill while carrying their task in right way and right time. It can be checked by doing assessment of performance evaluation related to training. “Assessment of training also should evaluate training outcomes, such as change in attitude, ability to perform a new skill, and recall of facts or behaviors taught in the training program,” ( Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2009).Thus, it helps to easier the Wegman’s executive work in measuring the success of company training.

Question 3
Do you think e-learning might be appropriate training method at Wegmans? What is e-learning? Why or why not? For what aspect of training it might be most beneficial?
Electronic learning or e-learning is self-paced, interactive training programs produced on CD or the Web that contain multimedia elements for instance sound, video, animations and automated test questions that provide instant feedback to the trainee (Vasugi & Kalaivani, 2006).
E-learning “involves receiving training via the Internet or the organization’s intranet, typically through some combination of Web-based training modules, distance learning, and virtual classrooms,” (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2009, p. 192)
On the case study observers agree that training is the big reason why Wegmans stands out. Wegmans uses a blended approach to training, combination classroom session with the on-job-the learning. On the job training is the employees training at the place of work while he or she is doing the actual job. Usually a professional trainer or an experienced employee serves as the course instructor using hand-on training often supported by formal classroom training. Such as coaching, mentoring, job rotation and apprenticeship.
Each year, thousands of people who have visited their store for the first time or moved to a place without Wegmans, the customers write asking to build a store in their town. Every new store require 600 employees of full-time not including the part-time it will impossible for Wegmans to fulfill the demand to open many branches per year. But still the number of Wegmans branches increase every year. And recently they on progress to open 9 new branches instead of the existing 77 branches all over the USA.
E-learning is appropriate as the training and development employees at Wegmans for particular situation like increasing numbers of branches as associated with the off-job training. Of the job training is training that carries out outside the job place such as class instruction. Class instruction is the most beneficial aspect to install the e-learning because they able to use e-learning as a tool in their training such as simulation, vestibule, programmed instruction and computer based training, distance learning and video conferencing, video tape, CD-ROM, satellite TV and so on. For humans’ research department, they will be able to see which employee’s needs to be trained and which employees passed or failed any training sessions. The employees will be able to resfresh the training session on the class without asking the seniors or partner.
Implementing an e-learning system at Wegman in the clasroom instructions would reduce the cost of traveling to training locations and the cost of bringing in training coaches from different branches. E-learning will help them reach every branches with and standardise every branches training the employees to teach the customers on the ‘eat well, live well’.
Conclusion
As the CEO Danny Wegmans points out, “We’re the food business, so learning with the five senses is very important to us” that means a lot of the training must be hands on. In the other words, they really concern on the 5 sense training that require on job training. In this context, the company will focus on the approaches and the contents that included in the training as both aspects ensure the success of training program. However the implementation of e-learning will help the Wegmans on their limited ability to control all the new branches as well as the assist the humans resources departments.
Leaderships line in the Wegmans must aware this problem and expand their rigidity in training and development employees for employees in every department because in order to standardise the products due to the increasing numbers of branches and maintain their achievement as a whole.