Costco Identified as a Giving Company By Leadership Expert Will Marre

Dec. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- Costco sets the benchmark for treating their employees as partners, according to Will Marre, CEO of Realeadership Alliance and renowned leadership speaker.  Marre is shining a light on Costco this week for their ongoing dedication to social responsibility and sustainability.

Costco’s spotlight is part of an ongoing blog series Marre is launching called Giving is Winning.  Marre hopes that by bringing attention to companies who are including giving in their core business strategy he can inspire other companies to follow these examples and inspire consumers to support companies who have the common good at heart.  The blog is in conjunction with his extensive research entitled 21 Companies for the 21st Century with Clemson University and the University of California San Diego on what successful companies are doing in today’s challenging environment that average companies are not.

Where Costco is especially winning from their social responsibility, contends Marre, is through their dedication to their employees by offering good wages and benefits. Marre states, “Recent surveys show that consumers view a corporation’s first social responsibility is to their own employees.  Pay, benefits and job security all matter in bigger and bigger ways in an increasingly insecure work world.  Of course this pays off in higher productivity, lower turnover, lower health claims and a host of other measures.”

The Just Means article, Costco’s Socially Responsible Employment Policies, compares Costco’s practices to that of its major competitor, Walmart.  Costco offers employees health insurance including dental even for part-time employees who have been with the company only six months, as opposed to two years or more for Walmart employees. The average pay for a Costco worker is $17 an hour, around 42 percent more than at Sam's Club.

According to Marre, Costco is also a company that gives big.  Some of Costco’s achievements include giving away one percent of the prior year’s pre-tax earning and donating it to United Ways in communities where they operate, children’s hospitals, and youth-related activities and education. Every warehouse, for instance, adopts an elementary school in need.  They do a third or fourth grade backpack grogram filled with supplies and encourage employees to tutor one hour a week.

Marre asserts, “Costco gives the way it sells.  Focus on the value, reduce the overhead cost, and then execute.  For charity, there is more money for the recipients.  For the business there is more money for payroll.”

For more information on Marre’s Giving is Winning blog, visit http://www.willmarre.com/blog.  You can also download a free series based on his research findings, “Apple to Zappos: What Today’s Successful Leaders Are Doing That the Rest of Us Aren’t,” at http://www.willmarre.com/wm/21-companies-leadership-resea....

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About Will Marre:

Will Marre is CEO of Realeadership Alliance and founder of Thought Rocket, a new online leadership development platform providing up-to-the-minute leadership research on what successful organizations are doing to thrive in the 21st century. Will Marre is also the cofounder of the Covey Leadership Center where he brought the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to millions of executives and managers worldwide. He also heads the advisory board of the Human Performance Institute (a Johnson & Johnson company) and is an Emmy award-winning writer of a public television learning documentary. For more information please visit http://www.willmarre.com.