Hy-Vee helping to keep customers and employees safe

Randy Edeker

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles on how retailers are responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

As coronavirus COVID-19 continues to impact the lives of Americans, Hy-Vee has taken a number of actions to best protect the health and safety of our customers, employees and ­communities.

One of the very first steps we took to address the outbreak was to increase sanitizing and cleaning efforts in our stores, paying special attention to areas like door handles, checkout belts, checkout PIN pads and restrooms. While we have always had hand sanitizer and sanitizer wipe stations throughout our stores, we now personally wipe down each shopping cart for every customer to prevent the spread of any germs.

As part of our initial response, we also suspended customer use of personal and reusable cups at beverage stations at our convenience stores and in-store dining areas. And, we are no longer allowing customers to bring their reusable bags into the store in order to protect the health of our baggers and the cleanliness of our bagging ­areas.

Other store changes that we made in March included the suspension of returns, refunds and rain checks, along with the temporary closing of self-serve salad bars and self-serve donut cases. And while in-store dining areas are temporarily closed in our stores, our food service and Hy-Vee Market Grille restaurants continue to fill pickup and takeout orders.

To best serve our higher-risk customers during this time, we established a time for them to feel a bit safer shopping in our stores. Hy-Vee set aside a reserved shopping hour for customers age 60 or older, expectant mothers and other high-risk individuals from 7 to 8 a.m., seven days a week. We also exclusively set aside the 7 to 8 a.m. hour for this same group of customers to pick up Aisles Online e-commerce orders or have them delivered.

As grocery demand surges and many individuals face temporary unemployment, we have been seeking temporary, part-time hourly employees to help fill positions in our stores and distribution centers. We believe this is a mutual benefit for the company and our communities during this time of great ­uncertainty.

To help protect our frontline employees, Hy-Vee installed temporary window panels at every checkout lane, pharmacy area and customer service area in our more than 265 grocery stores. The Plexiglas panels help protect those employees who are in the closest proximity to customers and have no options for distancing themselves from others. Employees and customers have been overwhelmingly supportive of this safety measure. We also placed signage as well as floor stickers in each of our stores so customers would know to stay approximately two cart lengths away from one another.

To show our gratitude during this historic time, we are giving a “frontline employee appreciation bonus” to all part-time and full-time store employees. Employees will receive a 10% bonus on all hours worked from March 16 to April 12, which is a $10 million commitment from the company. We are extremely thankful and appreciative of our frontline employees at Hy-Vee, as many have worked long hours to keep up with customer demand.

Glenda Bielenberg, who works at the Hy-Vee store in Denison, Iowa, wrote me and said, “Even though this has been a stressful time for all of us, I have seen our stores come together so strong for each other through all of this. I have worked down on the sales floor harder than I have worked in my 37 years with the company and, even though this has been a crisis, I wouldn’t change it for the world — the smiles that we can put on our customers’ faces and the thank you messages we are receiving make it all worthwhile.”

To further support our employees, Hy-Vee is offering new benefits to our more than 80,000 employees in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The company is providing job protective leave for employees who either test positive for COVID-19 or are required by health officials to self-quarantine. This benefit will provide job protection for a minimum of two weeks and applies to all employees, no matter their length of service. Under this benefit, full-time employees enrolled in short-term disability will also receive a minimum of two weeks paid time off. A second benefit we are now offering allows employees affordable access to telehealth services, including mental health. Hy-Vee is waiving co-pays for all full-time employees and their dependents who utilize the 24-hour virtual medical service, and we are allowing part-time employees to use the service for a minimal fee per visit.

With schools closed across the nation, we also expanded our resources to help those parents who are now working from home with children and need structure to their daily routines. Several years ago, we launched our Hy-Vee KidsFit program to bring a structured curriculum to schools to teach kids about health, wellness and nutrition. With kids now at home, we quickly switched gears and reformatted the fitness program so we could stream online videos seven days a week at 9 a.m. on Hy-VeeKidsFit.com and HSTV.com, the company’s online video channel. Now children and parents can tune in every day to participate in a quick, easy physical workout, while learning tips for maintaining a healthy lifestyle — for free.

Not only do we want to take care of our customers and employees during this unprecedented time, we also want to take care of our communities. As food banks in many Hy-Vee communities struggle to keep shelves stocked, we are pushing ourselves and our customers to reach a $1 million fund­raising goal to help our local food banks. At our checkouts, Hy-Vee customers have the ability to donate $1 or more, which is then matched dollar for dollar by Hy-Vee, up to $500,000. And our customers are responding, too. After the first week of this campaign, we raised nearly $200,000, and the fundraising continues through April 30.

Across our social media platforms, we’ve created a campaign known as #HelpfulSmileStrong. In stores and across the company, Hy-Vee has been leveraging our famous promise to provide customers with “a helpful smile in every aisle” to support and comfort them during this stressful time. Several of Hy-Vee’s celebrity partners, such as actor Donnie Wahlberg and chef Paul Wahlberg, have joined in the campaign by posting their support and encouragement to Hy-Vee employees.

And we appreciate the stories of encouragement and thanks coming in from our customers, too. Pat Deving Thompson, a Hy-Vee shopper in Johnston, Iowa, summed it up best when she emailed us, “I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate every one of you. I think it all the time, but rarely take the time to tell you. Consider yourselves told! We appreciate everything you are ­doing.”

As an essential service, we will do anything for a customer — especially in times like these. And, while we are all battling the unknown, we know that our grocery stores are able to provide one thing many outlets can’t — that being a sense of normalcy — as our customers wait for this epidemic to subside. We’ve been providing our “Hy-Vee helpful smiles” for 90 years, and it is times like these when that matters the most.

Randy Edeker is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Hy-Vee.