From the shop floor to the C-suite: How Alison Francis worked her way up

Not many retail leaders can say they have worked their way up from the shop floor to the C-suite, and even fewer can say they have done so at the same company for their entire career. But Alison Francis is one of them. The VP and chief diversity officer of Costco Wholesale, the second-biggest retailer in the world, with an annual revenue of $235 billion, started working for the warehouse club at just 16 years old. “I started as a cashier assistant in the warehouse in Issaquah, Washington, the [No.]110 location,” she told Inside FMCG.Over the next several years, Francis held a number of different roles, from an internship with Costco.com in the early days of e-commerce, to assistant general manager of warehouses in Brandywine, MD, and Pentagon City, VA, where she gained a deep understanding of the ins-and-outs of the Costco business.“When you’re a manager for Costco, especially at that level, you’re learning about so many businesses within the business,” she said. “You’re learning about hearing-aid tests and compliance in the pharmacy. You’re understanding what a ‘cut spec’ in the meat department looks like, and the ‘why’ behind it.”During this period, Francis was also learning how to be a better leader. While working at the Pentagon City warehouse, she took cultural communication classes to help her understand how to connect with team members who came from different countries and, in some cases, didn’t speak English fluently.“I learned that a smile and a wave of acknowledgement is a universal language,” she said. “With intention, every morning when I was coming in, I would walk up and down the aisles, and I would say good morning to everybody who was there.” Working her way up Francis’ experience in Pentagon City awakened her passion for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), though if you asked her parents, they would say she has always been concerned with fairness and equitable treatment.“It doesn’t surprise them that this is where my career path has gone,” she chuckled. Still, it was nearly a decade before she decided to pursue a master’s degree in human resources, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, at Georgetown University. Shortly after she started, Covid-19 hit. And then she found out she needed surgery on her hip. But where others might have buckled under so much stress, Francis doubled down. Three weeks before she was due back at work following her surgery (by this time, she was a warehouse manager), she got a call about a job opening in the regional office, where she would be responsible for the administrative functions of all 96 warehouses in the northeast.“I would describe that position as [like] being the adviser to the President of the United States,” Francis said. “From doing deep dives into HR investigations, to environmental compliance, to being the Covid coordinator for the region, to capital budgets and expenditures – you name it, and that was the responsibility of the regional administrative manager.” She performed that role for 18 months. Then, at the end of 2021, Costco’s longtime chief diversity officer, Joe Portera, announced his retirement, and Francis was named his successor.“I’ll be honest, I never thought I was going to be chief diversity officer,” Francis said. “I didn’t go back to school because that was my goal. I went back to school because I personally wanted a master’s, and I wanted a master’s that was focused on people, celebrating differences, and seeing how those differences can contribute to an organisation.” But while her path to becoming chief diversity officer may have been unconventional, she’s grateful for all the experiences and lessons she has learned along the way. And in fact, she sees them as her secret weapon.“I think what makes my role so impactful is the fact that I understand Costco and how it works,” she said. “I have been in the inner workings of the organisation. [Coupling] that with DEI is impactful because I can speak the language that the other leaders are speaking.” A forum for healing One of Francis’ proudest achievements since stepping into the role in March 2022 is the launch of Costco Connect, an internal initiative she designed to help leaders better understand the concerns of their team members. “I was thinking about all the things that employees have gone through over the last couple of years with Covid, whether it was loved ones passing away, or mental health for themselves or their children. They can’t bring their whole self to work if they’re so weighed down by everything,” she said. “So I thought, what if we had global listening sessions? Employees can sign up for whatever session they want, and it’s not the leader talking, it’s the leader listening to employees, whether it is work-related or outside of work.”She admits that some people were sceptical at first, but the initiative turned out to be a runaway success. Nearly half of Costco’s roughly 300,000 global employees participated in a Connect session this year, and the feedback from leaders throughout the organisation has been overwhelmingly positive.Multiple leaders told Francis they had “no idea” what their employees were going through, and feel better equipped to support them now. One example of this occurred in a listening session in Georgia, where all eight participants realised that they had lost a person in their life to suicide. “It wasn’t planned, but somehow they all ended up in the same meeting, so it was a forum for healing,” she said. “They were able to connect and share the resources they were using to cope. The general manager was also able to share company resources with them.” Francis aims to make the listening sessions a permanent part of the company’s employee engagement offering going forward.Another area of focus for her is strategic workforce planning and employee retention. While Costco historically has had very low turnover, especially for retail, she still sees room for improvement.“Costco has a probationary period of 90 days, and generally, if somebody doesn’t make it the full 90 days, nobody blinks an eye. But we’re really starting to look at why not. What is happening during our orientation process? What could we improve?” she said.In part, this speaks to Francis’ fundamental belief that “there’s value in everyone,” but there’s also a business imperative to ensure the company is able to keep attracting – and retaining – new employees.“If we’re not retaining those in their 20s and 30s, and keeping them as longer-term employees, then who is going to share the culture with the next generation?” she said. “At the heart of Costco, and the heart of our DEI efforts, is how we continue to maintain our culture and our values, and how we pour them into our people.” Looking at the retail industry more broadly, Francis had some frank advice for retailers that are looking to invest in their own DEI initiatives and departments. “You need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable – that is every day in this job,” she said. “Everything is possible. It’s possible to make progress, but it’s not a sprint. It’s definitely a marathon, and it will be a continuous journey, so you have to buckle up for it.”