Company Overview
Target Corporation is an upscale discount retailer that sells its products both online and in spacious, guest-friendly stores around the world. The first Target was opened in 1962 in Roseville, Minnesota and focused on the same vision of differentiated merchandise at competitive prices that remains true to this day. Today, there are over 1797 Target stores in the United States, 91 stores in Canada, and multiple locations in India and China. They employ over 361,000 team members world-wide at these locations. Current Target headquarters in the United States are located on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis and provides office space for over 6,000 employees. They also have headquarters in Ontario, Canada and Bangalore, India. 700 team members are employed at corporate headquarters in Ontario. Ninety-percent of them are Canadian. 2,500 team members are also employed at their headquarters in Bangalore.
Target had a net income of $2.999 billion in 2012 alone and took the 36th spot on the 2013 Fortune 500 list. The current President and CEO, Gregg Steinhafel, has helped the company become the second-largest discount retailer in the United States and they have many plans to expand more internationally. Their main competitor is Wal-Mart, which currently holds the number one spot as the largest discount retailer in the United States. Other competitors include: Kmart, Costco, and Big Lots.
Target Corporation is known for their very defined and differentiated culture. Although many employees highly value and accept this culture, many also consider it an extremely negative aspect of the company. With extreme viewpoints and little in-between, low retention and high turnover rates have been a key issue for those who don’t mesh well within the culture according to a number of employees that have been interviewed; however, its processes for recruiting, training and development offer Target many opportunities to soothe this key issue.
Corporate Culture
President and CEO Gregg Steinhafel firmly believes, and will often tell interns, that an employee at Target should love their job so much that they never want to go home. He’s attempted to design a culture within Target to accomplish this task, though it has opposite results for many employees. “Fast, Fun, and Friendly” are the three F’s that Target uses to represent the culture of the corporate headquarters in the United States, Canada, and India. Target encourages employees to mix work with pleasure and to incorporate a significant amount of leisure into their workday. As America's second-largest retailer in the U.S., Target stays ahead in today's ultra-competitive retail market by challenging themselves to become more efficient and more intelligent.
The pace of Target’s corporate office is known for being extremely challenging and fast paced. Every team member is encouraged to innovate, contribute ideas and discover solutions as an important part of a world-class team. Target is constantly trying to instill personal growth within their team members. By using clear, challenging goals for employees, Target functions at the most competitive level. Constant feedback is a major contributor to the fast paced aspect of the company culture. Target team members have a “touch-base” with their managers multiple times a quarter. In these touch-bases, managers deliver information to the employee as to how they are performing. They give them a strength to utilize and an opportunity that they need to work on. This constant feedback allows employees to know exactly what they need to be working on. Target never uses the word “weakness.” They do not feel that this is a fair indicator of who their employees are, and they are always trying to instill the idea that there is hope within a weakness. These opportunities also put employees under a certain amount of pressure because if they consistently receive the same opportunity they may be put on a probation period