Serving People First: How Weis Markets Elevates Learning and Leadership

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How does a three-person L&D team support 23,000 associates across seven states? In this episode, Chris Chappell, Director of Learning & Development at Weis Markets, shares how servant leadership, clear career paths, and just-in-time video microlearning are elevating the employee experience—and the customer experience—across retail, manufacturing, and logistics.

 

Show Notes: Weis Market’s Chris Chappell offers many key takeaways to empower team members to succeed. His top points include:

• Lead as a servant, not a boss. Chris Chappell centers L&D on servant leadership—meeting associates’ needs, anchoring to mission, and role-modeling behaviors so people trust and follow.
   
• Career paths + strong leadership = retention. Provide clear growth paths and accountable leaders. Weis Markets’ leadership development now spans five levels and correlates with higher engagement and reduced turnover that is 20–25 points lower than retail averages.
   
• Make learning “in the moment.” Snapshot video microlearning—accessed via QR codes embedded in SOPs—powers fast cross-training (e.g., moving a bakery associate to deli) and reduces friction during call-offs.
   
• Do fewer things, better. “Ruthless prioritization” keeps work aligned to mission, strategy, core operations, and compliance. The team consolidated ~1,798 courses to ~800 and is rebuilding high-value content for mobile delivery in Workday Learning.
   
• Build a distributed training network. Centralize standards and content, then empower expert trainers across departments to deliver. Add feedback loops with structured homework and report-outs so learners hold themselves accountable. 

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TRANSCRIPT:

Susan Cort: Weis Markets knows - in order to provide the best customer experience, you must first focus on your employees.

Chris Chappell: What I really wanna do is provide them with the tools that they need to make them the best that they can possibly be at work and make their experience at work the best that it can be.

Susan Cort: That's Chris Chappell, Director of Learning and Development at Weis Markets. With more than 200 stores in seven states plus a manufacturing and logistics business, Chris and his team are focused on creating meaningful training that supports employees and ultimately provides an exceptional customer experience.

Find out how  - next on Powered by Learning.

Joining us now is Chris Chappell, Director of Learning and Development at Weis Markets. It's great to see you again, Chris.

Angeline Evans: Hi Chris.

Chris Chappell: Hey, Angeline. Hey, Susan. Great seeing you again, too.

Susan Cort: I [00:01:00] know this is a bit of a reunion for us. We worked together like 20 years ago at d’Vinci's Parent Company, JPL, when you were any learning strategist, instructional designer, and project manager for our then learning solutions department. Gosh, time flies.

Chris Chappell: It certainly does.

Susan Cort: And, and one, one of the fun things we worked on together was a, a thought leadership program that included, uh, articles and a podcast called the Communications Vault back in what, like 2005 or 06.

So this is kind of a neat full circle moment.

Chris Chappell: It really feels that way to me too. Like I really can't believe that we're back to, you know, listening to podcasts and using those as part of the learning experience. It's really fantastic.

Susan Cort: And we're so glad that you're a part of this podcast Powered by Learning. So thank you for joining us today. Chris, start off by telling us a little bit about Weis Markets and your role there.

Chris Chappell: Okay, so we are a retail grocer [00:02:00] and we are in the market across seven different states. We have about 23,000 associates. What is interesting, and probably most people don't know, is that we also run our own distribution centers, our own transportation and our own manufacturing. So we have our own meat plant, we have our own milk plant, and we have our award winning

Susan Cort: ice cream.

Chris Chappell: most importantly.

Angeline Evans: I did not know about this.

Susan Cort: Oh yeah.

Susan Cort: I, I vote, vote for the vanilla peanut butter Weis ice cream. The premium one. It's, it is the tops. It's the tops.

Angeline Evans: my goodness. I know where I'm gonna go after the podcast

Chris Chappell: Give it a try.

Chris Chappell: Also, I have to put in a plug for our, uh, Weis by Nature, Organic Multi-Grain tortillas. Absolutely fantastic.

Angeline Evans: Okay.

Susan Cort: Good to know. Well, that's a lot of, uh, people, uh, and, and a lot of different things that you do. Tell us [00:03:00] about your role and what you're responsible for.

Chris Chappell: So. If it has to deal with learning and development, our learning management system, or training or leadership development, even getting into organizational development as well. I'm your guy. So you know, we wear a lot of different hats. We have a lot of different responsibilities, I'll just put it out there right now for 23,000.

Right now we have a team of, are you ready? Three people.

Susan Cort: Wow.

Chris Chappell: So how do we do

Susan Cort: You do that by eating those tortilla chips and the ice cream to stay energized.

Chris Chappell: you, you, you know it.

Angeline Evans: Wow.

Chris Chappell: So it, it is that, and then for myself, a lot of it is about strategy. How do we properly utilize our learning and development and develop our people to be the best that they can [00:04:00] be at work?

Angeline Evans: I have so many questions, I am not even sure where to start, so we're gonna just funnel 'em down. So starting with big picture, you know, just thinking about the grocery landscape and how even for consumers grocery shopping has changed so much over the last few years, how would you describe your learning and development philosophy at Weis Markets and how do you, like, how has that evolved since you've been there? Just tell me a little bit more.

Chris Chappell: Wow. Great question. So I will say that, I follow a, an exact philosophy? No, but there are cues that I take from the business and some guiding principles that really direct learning and development goes at Weis Markets. First off, if you think about retail grocery, we're a people business. One of the first things that I noticed when I came to Weis Markets was just the [00:05:00] friendliness of the people who work here and. culture reflected that. So knowing that, I think we need to understand that because it is a people business and people are driven by what their emotions, their needs, past experiences, their experiences, their future ideas of what is going to happen. So we have to take that into consideration, especially with learning and development. what I really wanna do is provide them with the tools that they need to make them the best that they can possibly be at work and make their experience at work the best that it can be. So, you know, you ask, so Chris, how do you do this? Well, you provide them [00:06:00] with the skills that they need. Primarily you provide them with a path, a career path, so that they can self-actualize figure out, you know, can I grow within this company?

Because if they see the ability to grow and progress and be promoted, then what do they do? They stay. They get better and they add value to the company and add to our customer experiences and our shareholder experiences so that those are two components. Lastly, you gotta provide them with really good leadership, and that leadership provides them with everything from direction to the right, resources to inspiration. That's how we've helped to fulfill those needs, those emotional needs, those actual needs at work so that people can have the very best experience as a wise [00:07:00] market associate. So that's kind of my philosophy. Now, getting into more of the guiding principles, me if I'm going on a little bit too long.

Angeline Evans: No, keep going.

Chris Chappell: At least in regard to the guiding principles. I was really thinking about this the other day like I think some of my own guiding principles are starting to bleed into the way that we conduct learning and development here at Weis Markets. So first and foremost, I am a huge believer - am an evangelist of servant leadership. So for those who haven't heard of this before, you know those listening to this podcast. The best way that I can describe it is it's a form of leadership that was studied by a, a gentleman named Robert Greenleaf. He was an executive at AT&T and he wrote pamphlets pretty much from. [00:08:00] 50s up through the 80s, they've been compiled into books.

People have studied him, scholars have studied him. What he did was not say, what is good leadership? But he researched it. He looked at the most effective leaders history, whether that was as Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, whomever, and what did they have in common? At the very core of that that they had, they took care of their people and the needs of their people, and then secondly, were servant to the lead or to, to the mission as well. they had a mission, they had a goal that they wanted to achieve. They shouldn't be any different in business. So we have a mission. We know what that is. So I am [00:09:00] as a leader serving to that, but primarily I'm serving to my people and providing what they need.

Susan Cort: You do get a sense, Chris, when you're in a Weis Markets store, that there is this, um, sense of comradery, of pride in the brand. Certainly pride in what the stores do in the communities you serve. I mean, helping feed the needy, for example, is a big mission, uh, uh, you know, objective of Weis Markets. I mean, uh, it, it does seem like, like your training and development, your learning and development rolls up into that very much and building that, extending that culture that you talked about.

Chris Chappell: And we can talk all day about that. And it is absolutely true. And even as part of our mission statement, the very last part of it is about the communities that we serve and. I think within the organization as an associate, we're starting to build that up even stronger through collaboration, [00:10:00] through working together across departments that were once siloed and really looking for opportunities to do that in addition. My personal opinion, I think it's a competitive advantage over a lot of other retail grocers that we are in our communities, we know our communities, we give back. I think we can do more with this, and I think we can do more with this through learning and development branch and really providing. Ideas, different direction how individual stores and store management teams and the associates within those stores give back to their communities in a coordinated way.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm. You know, Chris, before you even brought up servant leadership, as you were answering that question about the philosophy of wise, I was thinking, man, he really just [00:11:00] puts a lot of heart into what he does, and it reminded me of servant leadership, so I can see how much you're already, how much you embody that already.

Um, it, it definitely is evident I, I agree. I, I think that is a, a really meaningful and just feels right, uh, kind of leadership style as, as I've. Study different approaches more. Um, and I understand you've built out a pretty deep leadership development journey, not just for store managers, but across all levels at Weis.

Could you walk me through what that looks like?

Chris Chappell: Oh wow.

Angeline Evans: Um, your structured support growth, so hopefully I don't open a big can of worms, but I'd love to just hear more about it.

Chris Chappell: So I'm a big believer that leadership matters and you're, well, I'll take it as probably the best compliment I've had in a long time because one of my other beliefs is that you have to role model leadership. [00:12:00] Otherwise it's inauthentic. And people just don't believe. And if they don't believe, they will not follow because they do not trust. So with that said in me off my soapbox, um, what I will say is that when I got to Weis Markets, we had a couple of, um, leadership resources. So we had a program called Emerging Leaders. It was kind of relegated to only one area of the business and was fairly small, fairly limited. It was a couple of workshops. Um, and I think biweekly phone calls. addition to that, we had some assessment in regard to, um, Korn Ferry's 360. Uh, since that time, our mission has been within the department was to really roll out leadership development to what we. Call our five levels of leadership, [00:13:00] and primarily those are within our store ops division. However it extends to our other areas, whether it's the distribution, transportation, manufacturing, or store support center, which is our corporate offices. So, not everything is built out yet. However, we've increased participation. I believe it's by 117% since, since the beginning. Um, our engagement, or what we call associate opinion survey scores regarding leadership have steadily increased over the past two years. Turnover has gone down over the past two years. not saying that it's all attributed to the leadership programs, but I think a large part of it is because when we have good leaders and leaders who are held accountable to their own [00:14:00] behavior and that there is a set standard of that behavior, then people wanna stay.

So that particular program was built primarily for our store manager level, our director level, um. We've moved to in both directions. So we've developed another program called our Level Up Leadership Program for our managers, our regional operations specialists, as well as some of our HR support staff who work with them on a regular basis. Um, a lot of that is highly experiential and you know. a lot of practice and feedback loops, so that's kind of an interesting one. Uh, we also push down, you know, we an A SM or an assistant store manager program. We have a HIPO for that as well, which is [00:15:00] another program. So we keep developing out the different levels knowing that you should not have poor leadership at Weis Market at any level. We want to be able to coordinate so that each level builds upon the next and is assessed. I think that's probably the other really important part here, is that we are, um, measurement and metric focused. Just to make sure that things are going well. You know, tell us whether we're doing a good job at providing the training that's necessary and the development, but then also holding people accountable or leaders accountable to what they need to be accountable for.

Angeline Evans: It sounds like it's making a pretty big impact. I mean, those are some really good. Metrics you shared there. I know you said they couldn't be directly attributed, but it's

Chris Chappell: Yeah.

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Chris Chappell: I mean, [00:16:00] for instance, you know, retail we have, and this may sound bad for some, um, different verticals, but in retail we probably have a turnover rate that's about, 20, 25 percentage points lower than the industry average. And within distribution and transportation, it's even greater.

Susan Cort: And I would think Chris, part of that has to be not just the training and development for the leadership, which trickles down and of course makes the experience better for the, the average team member, but the training that you're offering your team members to make sure they're prepared, that that's gotta go a long way.

Chris Chappell: And that I absolutely love my team. So it's been a privilege to me to watch them grow learn and progress in their careers. In fact, two of the leadership [00:17:00] programs that we developed over the past year, year and a half were part of their development journey. So it all started off with me teaching them how to manage a project and how to program manage. As part of that, their, their practical, they had to develop out a program, run it through the entire project of developing it and getting it implemented, and then implement it. And now we're in a cycle of continuous improvement. Going back to guiding philosophies, kaizen, and knowing that no project, no program is ever done. It's in a constant state of improvement?

Angeline Evans: I love that and I love to hear that they're also developing themselves. I feel like oftentimes, uh, you know, you talk to L&D professionals and we neglect [00:18:00] ourselves.

Chris Chappell: We do.

Angeline Evans: …busy developing programs for others, and you gotta do that self-care, right? So.

Chris Chappell: Absolutely. So literally over the course of, I would say about three months. Almost every day for like an hour, I would teach them one part of either project management or program management. They would it, again, going back to the word iteratively, build their their program to the point where it was ready for implementation and rollout.

And now we have these great programs that get great feedback. Even better than that, the self-actualization that I see from my staff, from my associates is so rewarding to see them grow as individuals within their career. And just knowing that [00:19:00] I could step outta my role at any second, and I know this department would run well.

Angeline Evans: That's a great feeling to have built that up.

Chris Chappell: It really is.

Angeline Evans: So talking about the programs, you know, we always want hearing you speak, you know, I'm sure a lot of your training programs are focused more around creating that feeling so that folks, it's more behavior-based. Right? do you get at all different levels to apply what they're learning? What sort of approaches are you using? Um, how do you make it happen at Wise?

Chris Chappell: So I, I, I will speak to my favorite. I love feedback loops with forced homework accountability. So a, a lot of people look at accountability as I have to hold people accountable. I don't wanna do that. I wanna create a situation where [00:20:00] people hold themselves accountable. So in a lot of my different programs that I develop and what my team develops, what we'll do we will obviously develop homework assignments for people to then take back into their work world is highly integrated into it.

So it is woven throughout. So for instance, in Level Up program. So again, that's the one for DMS. Let's say it was a a training on accountability. would work with one of their stores that may need a little bit more help. They would apply the techniques that were learned in that particular training. would journal about it in a well structured journal, answer questions about it, and then know that at the beginning of the next session, they would be reporting out on it. [00:21:00] Not only myself and my staff there, their boss there, their peers. So there's a bit of wanting to look your best

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Chris Chappell: by demonstrating, only did I learn these techniques, but I applied them and here were the results.

Susan Cort: And Chris, you also, uh, have programs in place to help associates kind of on the job as they're in the job and to make sure that, uh, if you're a bakery worker one day, but you need to fill in in produce, you've got what you need to set yourself up for success. Talk about that so that, uh, people understand how you're helping with that kind of, uh, a learning and development.

Chris Chappell: So the one thing that you can understand is that if people don't feel comfortable performing the tasks that they're asked to perform, they're not going to want to perform said tasks. [00:22:00] So. If we hire someone into the bakery and we need to move them to the deli to fill in, you know, due to call offs or for whatever reason, it's not the most popular thing in the world.

Susan Cort: To be transferred to another department. Yes. Yeah,

Chris Chappell: department, it's very un, very

Susan Cort: Well, 'cause you're familiar with what you know, you know.

Chris Chappell: Well, I think about myself, you know, if I was told, Hey, we don't have enough people in finance today.

Susan Cort: They, they don't want any of us in finance by the way.

Chris Chappell: no, no, it would be really poor decision, but if I had the resources to least perform rudimentary tasks. So say I get thrown into finance.

What's the first thing that, or first three things that I can do. This is where a program comes in that we call Snapshot. Basically, this is video micro learning. You [00:23:00] know, just think, uh, TikTok for Corporate America and it was a program that was sort of dabbled in before I got here our senior Vice President of operations, he basically handed it to me and said. Make this successful. So what we did was, first off, is find its purpose. So before it was just these videos, how to, and not very well integrated throughout our, our other processes for particular department. So what we did was we realized that, hey, you know what? Would probably work really well for cross training, especially deal with those call offs.

So one of the major business problems that we have, that a lot of places have is that we have [00:24:00] people not showing up for work. So that puts incredible stress on those who do show up. Obviously we need to serve our customers and do it in the best way possible, and that takes knowledgeable people so. What we did again, was repurpose it so that these videos would be for specific areas, for specific tasks. Starting off with those which were again the most rudimentary, those that most people would learn on day one, or in some cases, those that were most important, like making wise markets, chicken salad, so. We have these videos, do we get them out to people? So before we were having some technical issues. So we worked and collaborated with our IT department. We worked with our folks in store ops to figure out what was the most optimal way of [00:25:00] doing this. still aren't quite there. We still want something a little bit better, and we believe our new LMS is going to provide that. But what we did do also integrate these videos into our SOPs. So our SOPs have a, uh, QR code on them so that you can simply grab the SOP, which is in the department to begin with. You can read through that to get an idea of, you know, how you perform a said task, and then if you wanna see how it's done. You snap it with your, your phone or with one of the iPads that are within the department you can watch it. So we've, we've communicated this process out. We worked with department managers, store managers, assistant store managers to know that this was. was the process [00:26:00] now for cross training folks in the moment. So it's also just in time training, if you think about it. So that was one of the more innovative ways, ways that we teach skills to our frontline associates.

Angeline Evans: I love it. I mean, video transcends all aged age groups and learning styles. Everyone's used to digesting content and video, so it's a very approachable way to something when you're already doing something that's very uncomfortable, um, like switching your

Susan Cort: Especially, you know, if you need sort of the quick download on what do I need to do today? You don't wanna read a five page PDF, you just gimme the highlights, you know?

Chris Chappell: We don't, we don't have time for that.

Angeline Evans: No. I'm dying to know, you said you have three team members on in your department.

Chris Chappell: Yes, actually would be one of those three. So

Angeline Evans: Oh my goodness. So you have, it's three total

Chris Chappell: yes.

Angeline Evans: you tr [00:27:00] train a, a massive number of employees across your entire organization. How do you do it? How do you decide what gets built, what gets updated? Do you do in person? Like

Chris Chappell: Oh.

Angeline Evans: to me about logistics here.

Chris Chappell: First of all, rely on the goodwill of others.

Angeline Evans: Okay.

Chris Chappell: So we do have some people in the training realm, either as a full-time job or a part-time job in other departments. Um, I don't mean part-time, but in

Susan Cort: Their focus is part-time for, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Chappell: exactly. So part of my strategy as well is to find more of these people, and not only as subject matter experts in helping develop out the content, but also in presenting it you know, they are the experts.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Chris Chappell: So I see this as a great [00:28:00] opportunity. It's sort of like, um, if you think about the army and why the American Army works so well, a lot of it is because of our non-commissioned officers. So we have the generals and the commissioned officers at the top. They're figuring out strategy and you know, all of that. But when you need a decision made in battle in the moment, it's that noncommissioned officer who's doing so, and they have the freedom and the autonomy make those decisions, and they're prepared for it as well. So this is sort of the model that I'm trying to roll out even more so at Weis Markets. up to the point where I joined, I would say our training was very decentralized. So, know, other than the LMS people in other departments were providing training. Sometimes it was [00:29:00] coordinated through. L&D, sometimes not. What we're trying to do is really centralize the content, centralize the resources, prepare to great trainers. Then give them the autonomy and authority to go out and train what they need to train, because obviously we can't do everything. We'll take care of the leadership development for the most part, for the day-to-day skill transfer, we're gonna have to rely on other people. And whether that's in finance or transportation or manufacturing or wherever it may be, so. That's part of the answer.

Angeline Evans: Okay.

Chris Chappell: The next part of the answer is, yeah, the, the, the next part of the answer is, I'm gonna use a phrase [00:30:00] that our of it uses and it's ruthless prioritization,

Susan Cort: You have to do that.

Chris Chappell: Oh, you have to, if it does not support the mission, support strategy, support the core operations of the business, is a compliance issue -  it's put to the back burner. Has to be. So we really wanna focus on those things that provide the most value. And again, if it is supporting mission, vision, values, strategy, we know that it's going to, um. Beyond that. I will say that our core business does take precedent and they really, you know, we, we will give them what they need because obviously that's where our revenue is [00:31:00] derived from and where our interactions with our customers a curve because want those customer experiences to be the best that they can be.

Susan Cort: You told Angeline and me, uh, before we started recording today that you have quite a large catalog of, of, of the e-learnings. Uh, talk a little bit about that and kind of maybe what, what's in store, uh, with your very massive collection.

Chris Chappell: Okay, so Susan, you're giving me a little bit of anxiety here.

Susan Cort: Sorry.

Chris Chappell: No, that's fine. So we are currently, um, a new LMS, so we've gone with Workday Learning and we are still working towards that, we've run into some other constraints in regard to delivery. So this has become a primary concern, so with saying that we started off with. Well over, I think it was [00:32:00] 1,798 courses in our catalog. Now, that also included, uh, on the job checklists, but…

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Chris Chappell: Still quite a few courses through this process in working and collaborating with our different business partners throughout the organization, we whittled it down to 800 and and change. Um, from there we found that there were certain. Again, going back to constraints on the way that the, courses were delivered, especially in our store ops that we had to confront. While we did our best in the past to make sure that these played on, you know, different devices is none of them were really optimized for cell phone delivery, that has become a new constraint. [00:33:00] So now we're looking at how fast can we redevelop roughly about, you know, I think we were right around 120 some courses, not job aids. This was just pure courses as quickly as possible. Now, luckily, our IT folks, they, they've helped out a bit, um, with some different tablets in the stores. So we will probably be able to reduce that, but we're still going to be redeveloping a sizable amount of our content and ultimately all of it so that it can be delivered on mobile. So getting your arms around that, even the 800 is, is, is, um, sizable. But again, I'm going back [00:34:00] to the need to collaborate. It's something that we teach throughout our leadership programs. We have practice we. I hate to use the word force, but as part of the assignments, we make people collaborate together.

We teach people our leaders about different areas of the business so that they understand how we function as a system. Now I have to apply my own teachings to myself and look for ways to collaborate with the other departments, the other stakeholders who own the. Start to roll all of this into a well-organized catalog of learning so that we can regularly update, we can get rid of stuff that we don't need, make sure that we're in compliance with the latest [00:35:00] regulations. there, there's a lot to it, but. need to be better organized and I think our new LMS will help us as well as some new processes.

Susan Cort: Sounds like you need to eat that elephant one bite at a time.

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Chris Chappell: Absolutely.

Angeline Evans: So Chris, looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of learning at Wise Markets?

Chris Chappell: I have about a hundred things to go through, but I won't. So if I think about it, um, part of it starts with reimagining our associates work lives, really how do we make that better through both learning and development as well as organizational development. I think it's my purpose in life to do this, it's easy for me to bring that to an organization and say, how do we make our associates work better for them? Uh, second up, I wanna [00:36:00] normalize collaboration. So every organization that I've worked in since JPL has been very siloed. And I like to think about how we worked at JPL across the different divisions. come up with a singular, singular product. was amazing. It's my goal to bring that to every organization that I've ever belonged to. It's also important for me to do that here because I see not only. The benefits of what it does for a company, but the joy that it brings to the people who are collaborating. And there was a recent study and I trying to remember who put it out and I, I think it may have been Gartner, anyway, it showed that thing that people who collaborate in their work. Are so much happier in their work than [00:37:00] those who do not. So I see it as an opportunity to really improve engagement. And then I think the last thing I'll just bring up is, you know, just pulling together and centralizing things regarding learning at wise markets, giving our associates and our leaders the autonomy to run with it. So that, that excites me. And in really creating this, know I brought this up before in, in the interview, but creating this culture of accountability where I am accountable and responsible for what I do, the people that I lead, the customers that I serve.

And if I do that, I've done my job.

Susan Cort: Well, you're definitely empowering people to love learning and be a part of your process and Weis Markets is very lucky to have you, Chris.

Chris Chappell: Oh, thank you Susan. [00:38:00] Appreciate it.

Angeline Evans: Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Chris Chappell: Thank you.

Susan Cort: My thanks to d’Vinci Client Solutions Consultant Angeline Evans and our guest, Chris Chappell from Weis Markets for joining us today. If you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest, please reach out to us at Poweredby Learning@dvinci.com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered By Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.