Zingerman’s Delicatessen opened on March 15, 1982. Since that time, it has become an Ann Arbor institution and one of the country’s leading specialty food stores. This success has helped it to grow into the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, which employs over 700 full-time and part-time people. Around the December holidays, that number can swell to nearly 1,000.

One significant piece of the Zingerman’s puzzle is the Bakehouse. It was founded in 1992 by Frank Carollo and Zingerman’s Delicatessen founders, Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw, with the intention of baking their own bread in house for the deli. Today, the artisanal retail and wholesale bakery and baking school is co-managed by Amy Emberling and Jaison Restrick.

Amy Emberling shares how you can really make a difference with staff engagement. The key to this is servant leadership, which prioritizes the well-being and growth of employees and the community, rather than simply money. Instead of thinking of the organization as a top-down approach starting with CEOs and managers, the servant leadership model starts with customers, then front line staff and supervisors, with managers and CEOs at the bottom.

According to Emberling, there are six responsibilities of an effective servant leader: provide vision, give great service to staff, manage in an ethical manner, learn and teach, help staff succeed and say thanks. Zingerman’s founders wanted to invite everyone to help run the business and convey that every person was responsible for its success. Their goal was to build an organization where decisions would not be based on who had the most authority but on whoever had the most relevant information.

Training is a critical step in this process, putting staff on the right path to success. As part of the Training Compact, a trainer agrees to document clear performance expectations, provide training resources, recognize and reward performance, while the trainee agrees to take responsibility for the effectiveness of their training.

Communication is also important. The company regularly conducts open meetings and staff surveys to gauge how things are going and if there’s anything that can be done more effectively. Benefits of great staff engagement include better work and decisions, improved bottom line, reduced turnover, increased average tenure, higher morale, more fun and less stress for managers.

Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has an extra level of incentive, as it has been employee-owned since 2017. This fosters the emotional and spiritual benefit of actual ownership. It allows employees to share in the reward, risk, responsibility and opportunity of an owner. Ultimately, it creates more opportunity for cross-business inspiration and innovation.

Zingerman’s overall model of staff engagement may not be the best fit for every organization. Implementation can be a big cultural shift for employees. It also requires learning, development, time and effort, which can be a significant opportunity cost. It also creates high culture expectations from staff, which can be difficult to maintain. That being said, for businesses like Zingerman’s which have implemented it effectively and maintained that to a high level, it can be extremely rewarding.