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 “Gods of Guilt” by Michael Connelly if 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 the article titled My Five Days of ‘Bleeding Green’ in a recent issue of FORTUNE magazine. While the article was very well-written, it was its subject that stirred me.
Welcome to Publix.
The Florida-based retailer has been ranked 67th in the magazine’s list of “Top 100 Best Companies to Work For”.
In case you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned the year of the list, it will become clear in a moment.
Written by Christopher Tkaczyk, 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.
Here’s what I admired most about Publix:
- 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.
- FOCUS: Publix has reached its size with a presence in merely six US states.
- CONSISTENCY: The retailer has been on the “Top 100 Best Companies To Work For” list every year since Fortune started publishing the list in 1998.
- HUMANENESS: Publix has never laid off a single employee in its 86-year history.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
I’m not alone in my adulation of Publix. “It’s the kind of company I’d like to buy,” Warren Buffett recently told Fortune. “It has a terrific record in a very, very, very tough industry. There’s a certain amount of magic down there in terms of running the place.”
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.
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.)
There are no such undercurrents in the case of Publix.
As Alan Veith, the manager of the store in which the author was embedded for the week, says at the conclusion of the article,
“I can’t imagine a life better than the one I’m living, thanks to Publix.”
You can’t get a better endorsement than that!
