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Talent
Training the retailers of tomorrow
Ahold Delhaize’s Natalia Wallenberg tells us how one of Europe’s biggest retailers is approaching the upskilling challenge
With the skills shortage critical and the European Commission revealing that job vacancy rates in the EU have doubled over the past decade, every large organization recognizes the imperative for training and upskilling. But what is the best way to deliver it?
Natalia Wallenberg, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at Ahold Delhaize, one of the world’s largest food retail groups, says this question is increasingly front-of-mind. The company’s family of local brands serves over 72 million customers each week in Europe, the United States, and Indonesia. Together, these 17 brands employ more than 393,000 associates. In a recent interview, we asked her about the planning and delivery of learning and development programs for such a large, widely dispersed workforce.
“We are in the food business. Our purpose is to connect people around the dinner table, providing healthy and affordable food to families,” Wallenberg told us. “The same requirement applies to me – to connect our people not only to one another but to our purpose.”
“As jobs evolve and required skills change, we need to make sure we build a ‘learning organization,’ with learning available when and how associates want it,” she adds.
Wallenberg stresses the importance of making learning relevant to each associate, rather than creating one-size-fits-all courses that, for some associates, may have little appeal.
Skill-building for all
Many organizations have chosen to prioritize upskilling of staff designated “high-potential” – i.e., those expected to be the leaders of the future. But Wallenberg believes this view is too narrow and restrictive.
“My job as CHRO is to work with each of our companies to ensure the quality of leadership today and in the future,” Wallenberg explains. “But to future-proof our organization, we need to make skill-building opportunities accessible to everyone, not just our leaders and high-potential associates.”
Digital transformation has required associates at Ahold Delhaize’s local brands to master new skills. Wallenberg points out that it is frontline associates (checkout staff and other in-store colleagues) to whom customers direct questions on subjects such as how to install the retailer’s app to access its loyalty programs and learn about promotions, deals, and offers. Similarly, distribution center staff are powering the shift to multi-channel commerce.
The key to delivering training effectively to a high number of staff across different locations is to be flexible and unafraid to innovate. For example, Ahold Delhaize has developed tools that enable in-store staff to work through online learning modules via their cash tills when there are no customers waiting to pay.
Wallenberg stresses the importance of making learning relevant to each associate, rather than creating one-size-fits-all courses that, for some associates, may have little appeal. “People in our stores want to help our customers,” she says, as an example. “So, we need to connect the training to how we take care of our customers and the communities that we serve.”
One recent initiative is training around dynamic pricing. Using AI-powered tools, some of Ahold Delhaize’s local brands reduce prices according to the time of day. Bakery products, for instance, become cheaper as store closing time approaches owing to their limited shelf lives. The brands upskilled their operations teams, equipping them to design and apply dynamic pricing.
Looking forward, not back
Wallenberg has also driven a shift in emphasis during performance reviews. Feedback sessions, while necessary and often productive, can leave people feeling defensive, she argues. Even when managers are constructive and balanced, associates can take it personally instead of using the feedback constructively to shape their growth.
“We are deliberately moving from feedback to feed forward,” Wallenberg says. “Rather than talking about what has happened and the impact it has had, we’re trying to focus on opportunities to apply people’s skills and experiences to have a different impact, one that shifts us to a more useful focus on development.”
It’s also a change that sits more comfortably with Ahold Delhaize’s culture and values. “We introduced the idea of leadership behaviors last year, around how leaders think and act, and how that makes other people feel,” Wallenberg says. “Our number one leadership behavior is enabling our people to grow. That has to come through in all our training programs, and in the conversations that we have with associates each day.”
Having equipped its associates with new skills, it makes sense for leaders to give them the chance to use those skills. Ahold Delhaize has recently introduced an internal career website on which all opportunities in Group and Europe, including in different countries and at different brands, are listed.
“We’ve created more democracy by being transparent,” Wallenberg argues. “When I’m in Serbia and our people there express an interest in working in, say, the Netherlands, I can show them how they can quickly and easily pursue those opportunities.”
Such exciting openness creates an incentive for everyone in the organization to embrace learning and development opportunities. “Another leadership behavior we’ve introduced is ‘win together,’” Wallenberg adds. “When managers develop talent, they’re doing it not only for their team and its objectives but also for other teams and parts of the business. The associate is motivated to seek out opportunities and the manager has a responsibility to facilitate and support that.”
We’re creating even more connection through two-way learning.
Helping one another to progress
In a learning and development context, Wallenberg believes, the idea of togetherness is particularly important because colleagues will share knowledge and experience. Ahold Delhaize companies employ associates spanning six generations, ranging from one brand employing a part-time associate at 13 years of age to another brand employing an associate who is 95.
“Historically, the younger generations have learned from more experienced associates,” she says. “But today, with digital skills and transformation, the opposite is often also true. We’re creating even more connection through two-way learning.”
A related priority at Ahold Delhaize has been creating a sense of psychological safety, where “people feel heard and valued, no matter what their background or life story,” and can share their mistakes and discuss problems in other parts of the business without judgment. Ahold Delhaize local brands have invested in training more than 2,000 managers to create this kind of culture.
When colleagues feel supported unconditionally, encouraged to learn new skills and share experiences with colleagues, and enabled to seek new opportunities, their engagement goes up and attrition rates fall. “It contributes hugely,” Wallenberg says. “Not just to a sense of inclusivity but also to business performance.”
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