Total Rewards Program Design for General Mills

Introduction and Organizational Overview

General Mills is a major food producer with a stable business selling packaged foods to supermarkets. The company earned $17.9 billion in revenue in 2014, and on that took home $1.8 billion in net income (MSN Moneycentral, 2015). According to its 2014 Annual Report, the company sees its strategy as "putting the consumer first." The company competes by connecting with consumers and developing "deep insight into what they like to eat, where they shop for food and how they approach cooking" (General Mills, 2014, p. 1). The company notes that the industry in the developed world is mature, with just 1.5% growth in the U.S., slower than overall industrial sales growth. Input costs, however, were up 4%, creating a challenging operating environment. The Annual Report's explanation of the company's business indicates that General Mills is primarily a marketing-driven company, developing products and utilizing channels suited to getting goods to the customer.

This paper examines the key human resources needs for General Mills. The company has around 43,000 employees spread across a large number of divisions. In addition to marketing expertise, the company needs to have substantial production capability in order to handle the misalignment between rising input costs and sluggish sales growth. By identifying the human resources needs of General Mills, it is possible to design a total rewards program that complements other human resources strategies in order to meet the company's overall objectives. The total rewards program is the central focus of this paper and reflects the rewards strategies best aligned with the overall performance goals of General Mills.

General Mills is one of the leading food producers in the United States. Its domestic market share in major categories ranges from 9.1% in frozen pizza (Totino's) to 70% in refrigerated baked goods (Pillsbury). General Mills' organizational chart is complex. There are senior executives for product categories (e.g., meals, frozen foods), for geographic regions (e.g., Canada, Australia/New Zealand), and for functions (e.g., supply chain, compliance, investment). Jacqueline Williams-Roll is the Senior Vice President for Human Resources Operations. She has performed HR duties across several divisions — supply chain, finance, marketing, and organizational effectiveness (General Mills, 2015). This indicates that centralization of the human resources function at General Mills is limited.

One of the core values of General Mills is "innovation in all aspects of business," and another is "investing in, respecting and developing employees." These two core values are the most relevant in the development of a total rewards program. Investing in and developing employees reflects a strategy where the company finds good people, provides them with training and upward mobility, and seeks to retain those in whom it has invested. Innovation is particularly interesting because, in many mature industries, innovation is not a priority; however, General Mills launches dozens if not hundreds of new products every year. Many will ultimately not succeed, but maintaining an innovation pipeline of new products is one of the key ways for this company to succeed and keep its product lines fresh.

General Mills also relies on employees who can learn quickly, think creatively, communicate effectively, and work as part of a team. Part of this comes from hiring well, but part will come from taking employees who have the right attributes — hard work and a willingness to learn — and training them in the rest. The major challenge for General Mills will be to ensure that this is done consistently throughout the organization, despite the fact that there are many different companies each doing their own hiring. There may also be a mix of different organizational cultures, as well as chain-of-command issues given the complexity of the organizational chart.