Store Manager of the Year Chloe Summons: ‘All it took was stopping and listening’

Chloe Summons admits she’s still in a state of disbelief. “If I could bottle up that moment and keep it forever I would,” says The Grocer’s Store Manager of the Year, of the feeling as she collected her award on the Royal Albert Hall stage.

Summons revelled with Morrisons colleagues, including CEO Rami Batiéh, long into the night, catching an early train back to her native Lowestoft the following morning.

She returned a hero. “I wasn’t in store the following day but so many people reached out. Colleagues, Rami, other senior leaders, suppliers we work with, it was truly amazing.” 

So how did Summons reach this point? What’s been her journey? And what are her plans going forward?

Overcoming absenteeism

People have always been important to Summons. But when she joined the Morrisons Albion Way store 18 months ago it was the lack of people that represented her biggest problem. Absences were at an all-time 8% high. Combined with holidays and other paid leave it meant up to a quarter of the 224-strong team were off at any time.

“There were so many people calling in sick, or who were off for various reasons,” Summons says. “I knew if I didn’t have the people in store, I wouldn’t be able to make Norwich a better place to work.”

She set about revitalising the culture focused on her core values of “fairness, consistency and respect”.

This could be as simple as making sure managers actually replied to colleague queries in a timely fashion, or that all store colleagues were actually given their rotas in advance.

Summons also rolled out additional training for managers and hosted a number of welfare meetings which resulted in some colleagues being moved into other roles instore.

The process was made more difficult by the loss of the store’s people manager due to company-wide jobs cuts, but nevertheless, absences have fallen to below 3%.

“All it really took was stopping and listening to people about what they needed to do their job properly,” Summons says. “Nobody comes to work to do a bad job.”

Listening isn’t always easy when it comes to the 90,000 sq ft Norwich store, she says.

Smack bang in the city centre, with Carrow Road football stadium virtually in its car park, it’s the busiest store in the region with takings, which average £960k a week, boosted massively on matchdays. Its immediacy channels are among the fastest growing, up to £50k a week. Last year it was also the launch store for a new concession with Holland & Barrett.

“There’s a lot of external noise,” she says. One of her biggest lessons during the turnaround therefore has been realising that if the team were to be successful, her people-first approach needed to apply to herself too.

“Most people in retail are control freaks because we want everything to be right,” Summons says. “I took on a lot of the pressure because I wanted to help everyone. But if I’m not in the right frame of mind, how can I look after anyone else?”

She began employing a nutritionist and also makes sure to carve out time for running, cycling and spending time with her family and dog, which has helped her fully focus in store. Trusting her team to take on more responsibility has helped them learn too, she says.

Chloe’s caring background

Caring has been important to Summons throughout her career, quite literally. She initially trained in childcare but caught the “bug of pressure and responsibility” that comes with working in retail, during part-time shifts with Tesco. She stayed for 10 years before taking a two-year career break to work as a personal carer for elderly people in her native Lowestoft.

“I wanted to make a difference to people’s lives,” she said. “I really needed to ground myself in what’s important in life.”

Those lessons have helped massively since her She returned to retail in 2012 as a checkout manager in Lowestoft’s then new Morrisons store. After She climbed the ranks and was promoted to made store manager in 2020, a few weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic, which was a “strange” baptism of fire.

Stereotype breaker

It hasn’t always been an easy journey. There’s been times when Summons had to fight for promotions she’s felt ready for. But Summons is immensely proud to have been one of only three female senior leaders within the region, and the first female store manager to lead each of her three previous Morrisons stores.

“I’ve always wanted to break stereotypes,” she says. Three former colleagues have gone on to be managers, and she hopes her win acts as further inspiration that anyone can achieve what they want to in their careers.

True to form, the “ambitious” Summons sees the win as an opportunity to continue to challenge herself and build new connections to help get the best for her store and team. “I want to keep the momentum and use it to help the next leaders coming through,” she says. “I’d love to see someone from Morrisons up there next year too.”

In the meantime Summons “absolutely” plans to celebrate with her team.

“We have already displayed the win in our celebration corridor to thank everyone. Along with this we have a free cookie day for the colleagues, which we will run for different days to capture as many people as possible. This will be placed on our thank you table in our staff canteen.” And “as usual” she intends to ensure there’s “a good old fashioned thank you and talking with each person during the coming weeks.”