Promotion and career development

With increased company size comes an abundance of opportunities for development and promotion. We place special emphasis on the development of employees that have strong leadership or expert skills. Experts are involved in project preparation, analysis and research. They possess valuable characteristics such as innovative and customer-oriented thinking, strong analytical skills and a knowledge-seeking tendency. The results of their work are of vital importance to the decision-making process at Mercator.

On the other hand, our success depends on leaders that are focused on the management of specific areas of organization and the coordination of their colleagues Consequently, their range of skills is a bit different: we encourage them to develop entrepreneurial, resilient, change-oriented and risk-taking personalities.

Some companies focus their efforts on company leaders alone, but we believe that business excellence and employee satisfaction come from the development of experts as well. We believe that the benefits available to experts and leaders should be equivalent at Mercator. For every leadership position, there is an equally responsible and compensated position on the expert ladder.

Career advancement in our core area of retail also deserves special attention. In fact, the majority of our store and hypermarket managers started their career paths as salespersons in our shops. Hard work, experience and continuing education, combined with strong leadership potential, can advance your career to regional store manager. Although the promotion of successful and dedicated employees is one of our main advantages, we have developed more career opportunities for our promising and key colleagues. They can be promoted twice a year. Promising employees are defined as our younger employees with great potential for filling key positions in the near future. In contrast, key employees already occupy key positions.


Key employees meeting

Rewards

We observe and reward successful colleagues. Promotions are just one part of our story. We use additional rewards and contests to recognize our employees. The highest reward for work excellence and outstanding personality is the Mercator Award. It is granted during a special ceremony to every 1000th Mercator employee.

Another group of benefits comes from our contests. The selection of Mercator's Best Boss continues to grow in popularity each year. The process of selection is meaningful to the candidates, as it is based mainly on the votes of employees who participate in anonymous voting. Mercator's top four bosses receive monetary awards and their staff receives special recognition from our president.


Mercator’s Best boss contest 2009

We have developed two contests that provide financial rewards and bring public praise to our employees while simultaneously improving the quality of our company. One contest, the best sales staff award, selects a member of Mercator's sales staff via a series of special voting ballots received from our customers.


Winner in the Best shop contest

A second competition, the best shop contest, has become a traditional contest. The evaluation of our shops in all our markets is complex, as it involves assessment from our internal experts (trainers and micro merchandisers) and results from mystery shopper research. Awards are presented during a special ceremony to everyone working in our winning stores.