Case Study: Coborn’s grocery chain achieves unified recognition and stronger frontline engagement with Achievers

Success is in-store with Coborn’s holistic recognition and engagement strategy

Coborn’s is an employee-owned grocery and retail chain with ~9,200 employees across 120 locations whose mission is to inspire happiness, healthy living and simplicity. Rapid expansion and a largely offline workforce left recognition practices fragmented and made it hard to align people to company values or empower front-line managers to drive engagement and retention.

Partnering with Achievers, Coborn’s deployed Kudos (peer-to-peer recognition, campaigns and company-wide announcements) and Listen (Pulse surveys and guided action plans) to standardize recognition, amplify values and surface real-time employee feedback. The programs saw near-universal activation, strong manager adoption (77% send recognition monthly), ~1.7 recognitions per employee per month, ~75% Pulse participation, and clear business impact—employees recognized frequently were far less likely to leave, engagement scores rose at targeted locations, and turnover- and cost-savings improved as a result.

Coborn’s

Tara Gronhovd

Director of Learning & Development