Organizational Culture of Kohl's Department Store

·         Values: Two valued traits that Kohl’s Department Store shares is respect and responsibility.

·         Respect is a very important value amongst not only towards customers, but towards other associates. On the very first day, new associates are taught to be kind and work with other associates, along with always showing a smile to customers and to ask them if there is anything we can do to assist them with their shopping. One of the big factors to getting hired is knowing that respect towards your fellow associates and customers is what will help the organization make sales and maintain high customer service satisfaction.

·         Responsibility is also something that is highly valued at Kohl’s Department Store. Associates are trained to be responsible whether it means to be responsible with the technology that they are given to help them do their job or when the associate is up at the register. As associates we are trained to sign out any technology we get, such as hand-held devices. We are also responsible for making sure we log into the devices or registers and to remember to log off of them for the next person to use. Associates are also responsible with keeping track of when we clock in and clock out so as to make sure we are not forgetting to sign out or sign in.

·         Symbolic Elements: Two symbolic elements important to Kohl’s would be the brands that they carry, and the language spoken with other associates.

·         Kohl’s Department Store carries a wide variety of brands and the brands are synonymous to the store itself. Many customers come in to the store for the select brands that we carry such as: Nike, Levi’s, Adidas, Converse, Apple watches, and Fitbit to name just a few and that barely scratches the surface of brands the store carries. As associates we are also taught a brief background history of the brands as well and with this history knowledge, I believe it helps give an importance to the brands that we are selling.

·         Language at Kohl’s is what sets the associates from the customers apart because there is a certain jargon that only associates are privy to. An example of this would be our scanners which are called Blue Birds or palm pilots, to outsiders many would not know what we are talking about. This language is just a small facet of what shapes the culture for the employees only because while this sets the customers apart from us, they are still very much part of the culture that surrounds Kohl’s.

·         Role Elements: Heroes and Outlaws.

·         At Kohl’s, management values high customer service satisfaction and a great way to achieve this is by pointing out to customers at the registers that at the end of their receipt is a survey they can fill out. Those surveys really count and when a customer fills one out and adds the associate’s name of who helped give them a great shopping experience, the highly satisfied surveys are then put up in the survey for all associates to see them. In turn, these associates are viewed as the heroes for helping the store achieve great customer service satisfaction

·         As for outlaws, seldom does it occur when associates do not act the way they are supposed to, and it usually means that the associate was breaking the rules. Last year, an associate was fired because she was stealing merchandise. Management had found out because they started keeping an out on her because she would often take hour lunches, when she was only supposed to take thirty minutes. The police had to get involved and marched her out the store. It was a shock when it happened, but it reinforced the culture values of respect and responsibility because as associates, we need to have respect for our store and be responsible associates.

·         Interactive Cultural Elements: Two interactive cultural elements would be the rituals and organizational communication style.

·         The only ritual we carry out is the one that happens before the store opens and after the store closes. Everyday the manager who opens the store, brings the associates together at the registers and tells us what the goal is for that day. This ritual gives the associates a feel of how the day will go, if sales are expected to be high, then it means that it is going to be a busy day. The same goes for when the store closes as well, employees gather around, and the night manager tells us how we did that day. This knowledge lets us know if we made sales or not and if there is something we can work on next time to help the store succeed. 

·         Communicating with other associates is paramount to a lot of problem solving and the way we communicate the most is through walkie-talkies. The associates in a way are split up by this as seeing that only floor associates and managers are the ones who get the walkie-talkies and not the associates who are on the registers. This communication style shapes our culture because it creates clicks within the culture, the floor associates feel closer to other floor associates and the ones on the registers feel closer to associates who are also on the registers.

·         Context Elements: The history and the location of Kohl’s Department Store.

·         The history and location are almost synonymous to each other. Kohl’s was founded in the suburban Midwest in the state of Wisconsin in the early sixties. The start of Kohl’s will forever play apart in the future of the store and is important to the organization because associates are told of this history and the history of brands that are sold in store and online. In truth, associates are told more the history behind the brands because the brands are what make up the store and they play an important part of the culture.

·         Typically, a Kohl’s Department Store can be found in the suburban area of a city and that just so happens to be where my store is located. There are over a thousand Kohl’s stores in the US alone and they are scattered throughout in several cities. The stores tend to be scattered throughout a single city, so if that store did not have what the customer was looking for, then they could travel ten to twenty miles to the next nearest Kohl’s once we check if that Kohl’s has what the customer wants. Apart of Kohl’s culture is to provide great customer service to customers and the way to do this, is to give them plenty of ways to get what they need.