Dive Brief:
- Love’s Travel Stops is offering its employees tuition-free education and skill development through a partnership with online education and mobility provider Guild, the travel center chain announced on Monday.
- The program, called “Fuel Your Growth,” is available to the company’s nearly 40,000 full- and part-time employees in the U.S. once they’ve worked with the company for more than 30 days.
- The announcement comes a couple weeks after convenience store company Weigel’s unveiled an employee rewards program.
Dive Insight:
As labor continues to be a challenge for c-stores and retail in general — the separation rate for retail in March was 4%, compared to 3.3% for the total U.S. job market, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — companies are coming up with more unique ways to entice and retain employees.
Fuel Your Growth will help workers earn high school or undergraduate degrees; obtain certifications in areas like accounting, web app development and leadership; take part in boot camps on topics like career readiness; and take language learning classes for free, according to the release. The classes come from institutions like Yale, Cornell and the University of Denver.
Employees can also access career services, coaching support and other resources.
“When we make the decision to hire someone, we intend to support them from the day they are hired until they retire,” said Les Thompson, chief human resources officer at Love’s. “By investing in the growth of Love’s talented team, we meet them where they are in their learning and development journey while eliminating prohibitive cost barriers.”
The programs have all been designed to help working adults balance their jobs, education and personal lives, according to the release.
While some companies, like Rutter’s, are boosting pay, others like Love’s and Weigel’s are rolling out additional benefits to draw in workers. The MyWeigel’s Employee Reward Program gives workers a chance to earn points toward a catalog of items as well as enter sweepstakes for prizes. Sheetz, meanwhile, has on-site wellness centers for employees.
“Love’s stands out as an industry innovator, thinking big about how to harness opportunities and foster mobility within their workforce through a skilling strategy built for all employees,” said Terrence Cummings, chief opportunity officer at Guild.
Oklahoma City-based Love’s operates 641 travel stops across 42 states. It also operates 430 truck service centers.