The Container Store: A High-Performance Organization

Yes, I would consider the Container Store a high-performance organization because the organizational structure, reward systems, information system, task design, and the selection are all highly aligned with one another. Taking a deeper look at their organizational structure, it promotes cooperation, learning, and constant improvements. The Container Store highly encourages their employees and wants them to be as productive as they can. Hence, they offer an extensive training program. Unlike the industry average– 31 hours of training, the Container Store employees’ receive 360-hours of training over the course of two years (Noe et al., 294). With this many training hours, it’s clear the organization encourages continuous learning, feedback,

The Container Store may hold high employee expectation, but to compensate they reward these practices by offering members a higher wage. This company leads-the-market pay by offering nearly one and a half to two times more than the industry average. It’s hard not to be motivated by this. In fact, it seems most are motivated by the organization. According to their company web page, they have a 10 percent lower employee turnover rate than the industry average. They feel it’s their job as an employer to make their employees want to get out of bed in the morning (The Container Store) and this seems to certainly be the case. Furthermore, the Container Store’s task design is highly rewarding as well. The organization has set up inclusive job designs. Here, employees are allowed to craft their jobs as they would like, as long as everyone meets at the same end goal. This develops interesting jobs and increases worker satisfaction. Which, in turn, translates to lower absenteeism, lower costs and higher profits. Nonetheless, this type of job design unleashes creativity and innovations. Besides job crafting, the organization allows members to participate in the selection

Clearly, she feels deeply for her employees. Her husband even states if at any point “when we don’t know employees’ names, there’s a problem” (Noe et al., 295). This statement alone speaks miles about their feeling toward their employees. Their reward systems range from creating a fun and exciting work environment, to letting the employees help a charity of their choice, to hosting a prom to honor high achieving employees. Amy realizes by having a fun, motivating, enthusiastic and involved workplace, she will receive amazing outcomes. These outcomes include high-quality products, satisfied customers, higher sales, high profits, greater productivity, lower absenteeism and lower cost. By having motivated and happy workers, it means they are going to be less likely to call out or leave. They will also be more willing to put their best effort into their work, leading to higher quality products. Between happy employees and better quality work, this produces satisfied customers. Which, in turn, leads to higher sales and profits. Though Amy’s Ice Cream exceeds at its reward system, other elements are involved in achieving those outcomes as well. For instance, Amy’s task design highly succeeds too. Allowing employees to be involved in deciding which charity to help, really creates a sense of involvement. But more importantly, the company succeeds at its selection structure. To help