Betty Crocker, Green Giant, Cheerios, Hamburger Helper, Pillsbury, Progresso, Fiber One, Nature Valley; we have all heard of these products and most likely have these brands in our homes right now. All these brands are products of the General Mills Company. General Mills, headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is one of the world’s largest food companies. In fact on any given day it is estimated that General Mills provides 60 million servings of ready-to-eat cereal, 5 million cups of yogurt products, 5 million Pillsbury cookies, 2 million pounds of Green Giant vegetable and more than 1 million servings of Haagen-Dazs ice cream globally. General Mills is currently marketing in more than 100 countries on six continents; employing a little over 33,000 employees, half of which are working outside the United States. Global net sales for fiscal year 2011 were $14.9 billion dollars; $10.2 billion were from U.S. retail. And all of this started with two flour mills in the 1860s and Cadwallader C. Washburn’s vision to revolutionize the milling industry so produce flour with superior baking properties. Through this manufacturing, General Mills produced Gold Medal flour in 1880, which to this day remains the number one selling flour in the United States. The mission statement at General Mills is “Nourishing Lives – making lives healthier, easier and richer every day”. General Mills has its written values for the company on its website: Do the right thing all the time, Innovate in every aspect of our business, Build our great brands, Respect, develop and invest in our people, and Strive for consistently superior performance. How do they know they are succeeding in these values besides profits? In three of the last four years they have been listed among the top 10 in Corporate Responsibility magazine. General Mills has also enjoyed many other prestigious ranking including being number 58 in the 2011 Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” and being one of the top 10 in the 2010 Working Mothers’ “100 Best Companies to Work For”. Benchmark areas assessed for these rankings include company culture, benefits, advancement, child care, and flexible work arrangements. General Mills’ company standards include: paid sabbaticals, onsite child care, onsite fitness center, subsidized gym memberships, job sharing programs, compressed workweeks and telecommuting. The company appointed a flexibility manager to enhance the work-life balance for all employees. Fifty-seven percent of employees participate in some type of flexed schedule. General Mills has a nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation as well as offers domestic partner benefits. Professional training is also valued for its employees; salaried employees receive 60 hours of training per year while hourly employees receive 74 hours. They also offer free career counseling to employees’ unemployed family members. Nearly 2,500 of the 33,000 plus employees are 25-year veterans of the company. Only 2% of the company’s turnover rate is voluntary. The average annual pay for two of the most common jobs within the company is $47,453 for Retail Sales Representatives and $53,440 for Operators.
General Mills is diverse when it comes to employing and advancing women in the company. Forty percent of the company’s total employees are women. In management roles, from corporate executive roles to front-line managers, 41% are women. Half of these managers have been with General Mills at least 20 years and a third have over 25 years. Women head five of the seven U.S. retail divisions of this company. There is an 18-month co-mentoring program for female directors. Women in these professional positions have their own dedicated mentoring circles in the areas of marketing, manufacturing and engineering. Of the manufacturing plants, 40% have a women’s task force. Women make up 40% of the company’s top earners. With such a large workforce of women, and a majority of them being working mothers, General Mills has a special flexed summer hour schedule. Ninety-one percent of working mothers take part in this schedule. Besides women, 19% of the company’s employees are classified as minorities. As we have learned, large companies have the ability to recruit and retain employees through incentives. General Mills seems to set the standard for work/life balance in its company and in turn has reaped a profitable and growing 131 years of business.