February 5, 2025
While Simon Sinek’s portrayal of being a great boss is emotionally rewarding, it begs the question as the ROI of becoming Noah’s boss for c-store operations. Naturally, everyone wants to be supportive, positive, and receive accolades for creating a great place to work. However, how much does it really benefit the owners and shareholders? Is there any business financial reward for being a great boss?
Win-Win for Satisfaction and Business Value
It turns out that being a great boss and running great c-store operations not only helps managers to feel better, but it creates more value for the company in terms of business outcomes: profits, growth, retention, customer experience, and loyalty. Mason Cowan researched the value and sourced several Gallup employee research outcomes. He cross-checked his work with ChatGPT to confirm and validate his findings. In almost every key c-store operation KPI’s, being a better boss. In essence, the reward for helping managers get better is both higher satisfaction with your team and stronger financial results as well.
C-Store Manager Impact on Engagement
Conventional wisdom, convenience store experience, and research by the Gallup organization (see sources below), all confirm the importance of c-store managers (as well as most bosses). The management importance directly influences employee engagement, job satisfaction, and operational performance. Naturally, this influence makes sense. That is, the manager is highly involved in hiring, training, scheduling, coaching, appreciating, reprimanding and providing the most direct influence over how the store work is done.
Employee Influence Takes Many Shapes
There all so many ways to manage well. Each manager has their own style. The good ones have engaged staff, that work together to provide the service the customers desire. While no one can control others actions – neither the staff nor the customers, we all can choose our actions. A few basics apply across the board:
- Recruiting with honest applicant criteria,
- Direct and clear job re-requirements during hiring interviews,
- Thorough training with specific work outcomes,
- Caring interaction with team members,
- Firm and consistent follow-up.
These essential approaches to management result in a positive influence for operations that work well. It means making good choices and executing fairly over time with employees. Not everyone seeking a job is a good fit for your store. Additionally, no one will be perfect. We can, however, consistently lead our operations to perform well when we start with staff that fit our store and use our ability to influence results.
Strong store staff with great teamwork make a difference. In c-store operations, the staff make the loyalty, the experience and the overall operations. Even with high automation for payments, inventory, and any functions, there are still staff that work and make the customer experience. Those managers that hire, train, coach, track, and follow-up ensure the work is done well, at the right costs, comply with regulations, and achieve the company service expectations.
Manager Impact & Engagement Research Findings
Gallup performed extensive research in 2017 and 2023 regarding employee engagement and the state of the workplace overall. The findings directly support the impact and importance of the manager in terms of c-store operations. These studies are summarized below.
- Highly engaged teams experience 21% higher profitability.
- Engaged employees lead to 17% higher productivity.
- Companies with engaged employees report 41% lower absenteeism.
- Employee disengagement is linked to 50% higher turnover, leading to increased hiring and training costs.
- Engaged business units see a 22% increase in customer satisfaction.
- Strong engagement practices improve operational performance by reducing errors and increasing adaptability.
Employee Engagement
To keep staff engaged requires skill, time, and practice. Having clear hiring parameters, work expectations, and the ability to easily track and see the work performance is necessary for managers to have the time, knowledge, and awareness to lead. Workers expect the boss to keep their promises for the job and understand the contributions of the work. Having fair and accurate feedback is necessary for anyone to take correction and to maintain good work. Inattentive or unreasonable demands keeps most workers from trusting enough to give their best effort.
Cost of Lost Engagement
Losing engagement not only means poor service and customer satisfaction, but it also means harder and less rewarding work for leaders. Unengaged staff leave jobs sooner and with less notice. Poor work creates more work to address problems such as bad service, regulatory compliance issues, higher waste, and lower sales. Further, with turnover there is more time recruiting, hiring, training, backfilling, and higher costs for overtime.
Good Managers Keep Strong Workers
A good manager keeps the work reasonable, the job fair and avoids creating reasons to seek better employment. The effort of the store is focused on providing great service leading to higher satisfaction, loyalty, and profits. The staff fulfill the brand, the offers, and the customer experience. Great managers oversee the value of c-store operations when they become Noah’s boss and create a great place to work.
Related Articles: The ROI of Becoming Noah’s Boss for C-Store Operations
Research Sources for ROI of Becoming Noah’s Boss for C-Store Operations
Gallup. (2023). U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to a Nine-Year Low. Retrieved from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-sinks-year-low.aspx
Gallup. (2017). State of the American Workplace Report. Retrieved from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236927/employee-engagement-drives-growth.aspx