Highly-qualified and customer-oriented employees

Our ultimate responsibility is to the customers in our stores. We therefore strive to attract, retain, develop and motivate the best people at all levels.

Practical and innovative people management

Our management development practices, at all levels, encourage employees to grow within the company, through challenging assignments, targeted training, and rewards based on performance. We have a group-wide performance management process and system in place to give us a streamlined, transparent approach across the company.

Career progression is based on an employee's capabilities, performance and behavior consistent with our core values. We focus on developing our people to ensure we have the right management potential to meet our future needs. The majority of our vacancies are filled by internal promotion. When necessary, we recruit externally to bring in additional skills, perspectives and experience.

We work to be a company that reflects and supports the communities we serve: where people are treated fairly and can grow and have fulfilling careers.

We expect that all key employees receive performance appraisals to support their professional development. For all employees our goal is to develop skills and ensure that we have the best processes, tools and innovative solutions in place to run our business in the simplest and most efficient manner possible.

Training

Since most of our employees have direct contact with customers, they need to have the right knowledge and skills to make a visit to our stores an excellent experience. Training is one of the tools that support our customer focus and our employees' professional growth. Every position in the company has a specified training offer.

Most formal training activities in our companies are handled locally and focus on store-level jobs, since these employees make up the largest group in our employment base. However, we have a computer-based learning management system in place that provides training opportunities to both store and corporate employees, Ahold-wide. This learning tool gives employees access to web-based training and educational programs targeted to their positions. It enables us to quickly and efficiently distribute training programs to a wide audience, ensure consistency, and monitor compliance with mandatory training. At Giant-Carlisle, for example, over 15,000 employees completed web-based training programs in 2007. In 2008, Stop & Shop and Albert Heijn will implement this learning system for store-level employees.