How does this help our stores win?
Bring us the initiative, policy, or engagement result you're working on, and we'll help you answer that question before it reaches stores.
Our Work
We've partnered with national grocery retailers on sustainability strategy, EVP development and activation, and onboarding. Each engagement started with listening, so the work fit the reality of the people expected to execute it.
Case Study 01 | National Grocery Retailer
Sustainability Strategy
Where they started
The sustainability team came to us with a measurable gap in store-level engagement and a need to understand what was getting lost in translation.
Stores didn’t register sustainability as a business priority.
What we heard
Store listening sessions uncovered three distinct barriers:
- With ambitious performance goals, stores didn't register sustainability as a business priority.
- Programs that reduce food waste through donations created community pride, but the environmental impact story was lost.
- The information reaching stores was too abstract to feel relevant or meaningful.
What we did
We designed a strategy to address all three — clarifying the narrative, reconnecting the programs to their environmental impact, and sharing goals and metrics that resonate with how store teams experience the business.
“The CATO team took the time to really listen, challenge our assumptions, and connect the dots we hadn’t considered before. The insights were both thoughtful and practical. In the end, we had a clear path forward that shifted how we think about our approach.”
Manager of Sustainability
Case Study 02 | National Grocery Retailer
EVP Development & Activation
Where they started
The client had the research, the landscape data, and internal ambition — but was heading toward a traditional EVP activation (comms, training decks, launch assets) that wouldn't change hearts and minds in stores.
Brand promises don’t land through comms decks, posters, or launch events.
What we did
We reframed the work:
- Grounded the EVP in where the client could genuinely differentiate — informed by their own employee data.
- Reframed the activation channels. Brand promises don't land through comms decks, posters, or launch events. The real channels are managers, operations, and policies — the places brand promises either come alive or quietly erode.
- Named the backstage role. Most EVP rollouts stop at announcing the promises to corporate. We went further — articulating what each function (Talent, Total Rewards, DE&I, Comms, Operations) needed to do differently for the promises to hold up.
- Built the words and creative that bring it to life — framing, language, and assets ready to drop into career sites, comms, leader talking points, and the day-to-day moments where promises actually get tested.
Case Study 03 | National Grocery Retailer
Onboarding Experience
Where they started
The L&D team came to us wanting a better digital experience for a key corporate role. What started as a UX project became something more fundamental.
Sequenced by role reality, not content category.
What we found
Through discovery interviews we found:
- The existing onboarding hub was organized the way content is managed internally — by topic and delivery type — not the way a new hire actually ramps up.
- New employees were left to infer what mattered most, manually sequence their own learning, and rely on managers to fill gaps the system could have filled.
- Managers were absorbing work the experience should have handled, adding load to people already stretched thin.
What we did
We redesigned the experience around a six-week ramp-up framework — sequenced by role reality, not content category — so new hires could navigate independently, understand what mattered and why, and get up to speed without adding to their manager's workload.
