DOLLAR GENERAL CORPORATION: CREATING A COACHING CULTURE
In fiscal years 2023 and 2024, Dollar General Corporation focused on the development and empowerment of its people by investing in new leadership development: performance coaching and transformational coaching. The retailer sees these coaching programs as game-changing in its operational approach as coaching fosters a culture of transparent communication and mutual respect, thereby boosting employee engagement and empowerment. As employees thrive and grow, they contribute more effectively to Dollar General’s business operations, driving increased revenue and positively impacting employee retention.
Program Details
In first and second quarter 2024, Dollar General launched several training initiatives focused on creating a coaching culture across all business units: Supply Chain, Retail, and its corporate office (known as the Store Support Center). Each business unit’s coaching reinforcement is specific to its unique needs:
Coaching for Performance Culture in Supply Chain, including leaders in the Store Support Center: This year-long, virtual program for vice presidents, directors, and managers is designed to enhance a culture that welcomes coaching, accountability, and high performance. Additionally, Supply Chain directors, assistant directors, HR managers, and Learning Operations managers participated in a virtual program to help them:
- Identify gaps and take full responsibility and ownership for their results
- Declare what they will be authentically accountable for
- Welcome and own what Dollar General expects of them
External and internal coaches provide consistent (sometimes as often as weekly) personalized, follow-up coaching.
The Leadership Journey in Supply Chain: This curriculum trains, mentors, and coaches numerous audiences to practice 10 core leadership skills that:
- Prepare hourly employees for supervisory roles
- Accelerate the development of high-potential supervisors
- Develop an additional 1,200-plus leaders in Dollar General’s distribution centers and private fleet
Depending on the specific audience, The Leadership Journey is delivered both completely virtual and via hybrid (in-person and virtual) delivery. Hybrid delivery begins with virtually facilitated training and is handed off to in-person facilitators (Learning Operations managers), who follow up with group coaching sessions with both the participants and their program mentor. Mentors also are expected to support their team members with executing individual personal action plans on the job.
The Leadership Journey is accompanied by daily reinforcement training through the retailer’s artificial intelligence-powered learning platform. It also uses mid-point and final check-in surveys and conversations, aligned to Dollar General’s core competencies, to reinforce, focus, and ensure progress.
Field Leader Learning Journey for Retail: Launched in May 2024, this program includes an in-store experience and time at the Store Support Center focused on both tactical operations and leadership. It is an adaptive learning journey that spans 12 weeks and provides full support to Dollar General’s retail field leaders. The program emphasizes leadership foundations, proactive accountability, and difficult conversations to reinforce Dollar General’s core values. District managers focus on leadership and coaching and learn skills to support their teams. The hybrid experience includes in-store learning, on-the-job learning, virtual learning, and support from key business partners.
Results
In second quarter of fiscal year 2024, Dollar General’s internal promotion rate was 64 percent, which surpasses the industry benchmark of 25 percent per Gartner Research for U.S. companies with 50,000-plus employees. Dollar General also notched a 4.2 percent increase in net sales and a .5 percent increase in same-store sales.
In Supply Chain, the company saw a 10 percent year-over-year improvement in engagement as defined by the DG Voice employee feedback survey. Dollar General also exceeded the Retail Industry Leader Association’s (RILA) norm for the employee belonging index (80 percent) with an overall company belonging index score of 84 percent.
ROSENDIN: PERFORMANCE COACHING
At the core of Rosendin’s mission statement, “Building Quality/Building Value/Building People,” the phrase, “Building People,” emphasizes the company’s commitment to creating a workplace that fosters employee growth. With new generations entering the workforce, Rosendin’s mission to improve the construction industry is more critical now than ever.
In 2024, the Learning and Development (L&D) team introduced the Performance Coaching Manager series. Designed to provide a strong foundation for building relationships between managers and their direct reports, this series is unique in its approach. It recognizes that employees often leave companies because of their managers rather than the organizations themselves.
Program Details
The series draws insights from the book, “The Effective Manager,” by Mark Horstman and consists of four distinct modules. The first module, titled “One-on-Ones: Getting to Know Your People,” was developed, piloted, and rolled out in 2024.
Delivering the Performance Coaching Manager series was not without its challenges. The program required an in-person, workshop-style format to be facilitated at 20 locations for all Rosendin managers, totaling about 400 participants. Due to the aggressive in-person rollout, Rosendin collaborated with its Human Resource Business Partners (HRBPs) and Human Resource Generalists (HRGs) to help deliver the class content. The HR professionals underwent specialized training from Pinnacle, a third-party public speaking consultant Rosendin uses to train its facilitators. L&D professionals co-facilitated the sessions alongside the HR professionals to provide a robust support system. Once the HR professionals felt confident to do so, they were able to facilitate the classes independently.
Why did the HR professionals need assistance in delivering the content? The instructional design was very different from what they had ever presented. Here is why: Performance Coaching utilized an innovative new Rosendin design and facilitation style. In 2023, Rosendin introduced and tested a new instructional design and facilitation style in a program called Dynamic Leaders. The educational methodology resembles an enhanced Socratic teaching method, transforming all main learning objectives and content into participant-driven questions. The class content is structured around a tested formula of 40 percent participant questions, 40 percent activities, and 20 percent lecture. The L&D department presented its “Engage, Pull, Transform” session spotlighting the techniques used in the Performance Coaching series at the Training 2025 Conference in Orlando, FL, in February.
Results
Rosendin delivered the first module of Performance Coaching to 80 percent of management by the end of 2024. When asked, “Do managers at Rosendin need this type of training?” all 225 participants responded, “Yes,” in the anonymous survey. The class continues to receive a 4.6-star rating out of 5 for its engaging content.
Additionally, the course was designed to address the 2023 Employee Engagement Survey results fostering positive manager-employee relationships. As a result of the Performance Coaching classes, the data shows a 13 percent increase in participation in the 2024 Employee Engagement Survey. The five most substantial increases in scores were manager-employee interactions from the 2024 employee engagement survey.