WinCo Foods

Emily Ressegger

Local Leadership Accountability

Emily Ressegger is a strategic human resources executive with more than 25 years of experience in business operations and people leadership. As Director of HR, Field Operations at WinCo Foods, she partners with senior executives to strengthen organizational performance through leadership development, workforce strategy, and employee engagement.

Prior to WinCo Foods, Ressegger spent 18 years at Starbucks, progressing through leadership roles from Store Manager and District Manager to Human Resources Business Partner. Her extensive experience leading frontline operations and advising senior leaders gives her a unique perspective on the connection between leadership accountability, organizational culture, and employee retention. She believes meaningful engagement begins locally, where leaders take ownership of their teams, build trust, and create environments where employees can thrive.

Ressegger holds a bachelor's degree from Pacific University, a certificate in Strategic Human Resources Leadership from Cornell University, and is currently pursuing her MBA at Western Governors University.

Building a consistent employee experience across multilocation operations requires more than corporate initiatives—it requires leaders who take ownership of the culture they create.

Making Local Leaders Accountable for Employee Engagement

As the HR Director of Field Operations for a multi-state grocery chain, I get a first-hand look at engagement in stores and in distribution centers. What I’ve learned is that even with identical policies, benefits, and engagement programs, the employee experience can vary wildly. Employees may work for the same organization, but their day-to-day experience is shaped by their local leadership.

Traditionally, HR has owned engagement. Surveys are conducted, results analyzed, plans implemented, and little changes year after year. New recognition systems are put into action, leaders explain away poor results, and retention doesn’t improve. However, it doesn’t have to be that way!

Last year, we conducted our annual engagement survey and something surprising emerged: in the stores and districts where engagement was the local leaders’ responsibility, scores and retention increased. Not by a little, but by a lot. It was so significant that it warranted a deeper dive to better understand what was happening. What I uncovered was a change in accountability; not the performance management/punitive version but the one where ownership was given to the leader of the location, expectations were set and clearly defined, and coaching and feedback was given. The leader owned the experience, which gave them the opportunity to examine how their own behaviors influenced results.

“When local leaders take accountability for those experiences, employees feel heard, valued, and connected to the organization’s success.”

In speaking with the HR Business Partners and District Managers, I heard that the teams identified three themes that led to the changes: they listened to the feedback without becoming defensive, identified meaningful actions, and followed through visibly. In contrast, stores that did not see improvement in their engagement and retention scores were frustrated by repeatedly providing feedback without seeing any action. Ironically, seeking feedback and not acting upon it was more disengaging than never having asked in the first place.

It’s easy to assume that at an Employee-Owned company, all employees are engaged and feel a sense of financial and cultural ownership. However, that’s not a given. Leaders must still help their employees connect their daily decisions and contributions to the success of the organization. Ownership becomes a cultural advantage when employees understand not only what they own, but HOW they can influence its success.

When turnover climbs, it’s often seen as a staffing or recruiting problem. Leveraging engagement results, looking at retention patterns, and the leadership behaviors can reflect deeper issues. Communication, onboarding, development, and workplace culture are critical pieces of the puzzle.

Turning Accountability into a Culture of Ownership

In one of our locations, turnover continued to be a challenge, yet it was in stark contrast to a neighboring store where hiring was more problematic, but retention was much higher. The Store Manager spent time diving into metrics, looking at numbers, and missing a critical element: their own behaviors. That leader was not listening to the employees and asking how to improve but implementing plan after plan that didn’t get to the core of the problem. The real problem was communication; the employees were getting conflicting messages on expectations and never felt set up for success. They’d get frustrated and eventually leave.

What turned the tide was a strategic partnership between the HR Business Partner and the District Manager. They worked together to better equip the DM to understand the engagement and retention data and identify patterns across locations. They built a plan to build leadership capability and coach leaders through difficult feedback. By connecting workforce outcomes to operational performance, they were able to set clear expectations and set accountability measures. The role of HR in this case was to provide insight and develop leadership capability. The role of the DM was to coach the Store Manager to own the execution. Over time, the store with turnover issues began to see fewer people leaving. Store employees shared that while the work was still hard, expectations were clear and they knew how to be successful, a clear change from what they had been experiencing prior.

Employee engagement is not something an organization can mandate from a corporate office. It’s built through thousands of daily interactions between leaders and employees. When local leaders take accountability for those experiences, employees feel heard, valued, and connected to the organization’s success. And when that accountability is reinforced by a genuine culture of ownership, engagement becomes more than a measurement- it becomes a shared commitment to building a workplace where people want to contribute, grow, and stay.