Nine million miles—that’s how far you’d travel if you went to the moon 37 times. Coincidentally, that’s also how far Domino’s Pizza delivery drivers travel each week in more than 60 countries. The 170,000 employees who work in the 8,800 stores in these nations get 1.3 million pizzas out the door each day. And they’ve been doing this every day since 1960, when the brothers, Tom and James Monaghan, bought their first small pizzeria in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The recipe for keeping these employees working happily at their jobs is something the company takes as seriously as its pizza recipe. And just as Domino’s totally redesigned its pizzas “from the crust up” in 2010 to keep customers coming back for more, it also has been rethinking its approach to employees to keep them coming back to work.

This is no minor concern for Domino’s Pizza, considering that annual turnover within stores has been more than 150 percent, resulting in an entirely new crew about every nine months. Although these figures are lower than the industry average for fast food, the fact that it costs upward of $2,500 to replace an entry-level worker (and 10 times more for a manager) was enough to make boosting employee retention a priority for the Domino’s corporate management team in Ann Arbor. In 2005, under the leadership of David Brandon, Domino’s launched several initiatives to tackle the turnover problem, which continued when Patrick Doyle assumed the CEO post in 2010.

Brandon’s approach was straightforward. Because employees tended to leave when managers resigned, he focused primarily on managers. Unlike some other CEOs facing the same problem in their companies, he opted not to buy his managers’ loyalty by raising their pay. He believed that would have only a small and temporary effect on retention.

Instead, he initiated a three-prong approach, beginning by hiring better managers. With this in mind, Domino’s officials worked with researchers to develop an online test to select managers who had adequate levels of financial knowhow and whose management styles were appropriate for the company. Once managers were selected, they were trained thoroughly in ways of effectively recruiting employees and interviewing them so as to ensure their success.

The second focus of the retention effort involved giving store managers tools to assess how well their employees are performing. This consisted of computerized tracking systems that enable them to learn precisely how long the pizza production process is taking and to identify star performers as well as those who need additional help.

Questions for Discussion 1. Of the three initiatives put into place to boost retention, which one do you believe will prove to be most effective? Why?
2. Based on the material in this chapter, what else could Domino’s Pizza do to reduce its turnover problem?
3. How might making an effort to promote job satisfaction contribute to reducing turnover? As a manager of a Domino’s store, what exactly could you do to help in this way?