Michael Davis’ General Mills Presentation

Michael Davis from General Mills is giving a presentation this morning to our Mayo Clinic Public Affairs meeting. General Mills is the only other Minnesota-based company (besides Mayo Clinic) that is in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. Michael is the Senior Vice President for Global Human Resources.

Michael talked about how General Mills tries to strike the balance between a high-performance culture and a family-friendly environment. The company also has a legacy of community involvement, with 80 percent of its employees volunteering in the community, and the company gave over $80 million charitably last year.

The company mission is Nourishing Lives. They want to both nourish the communities they are in, as well as the people.

Located on the banks of the Mississippi, General Mills had a significant disaster in 1878 when its mill exploded. Mayo Clinic also had a disaster in its origins, with the Rochester tornado of 1883.

General Mills is working sustainability, having set goals of reducing energy usage, greenhouse gas, solid wast and water usage by 5 percent to 15 percent between 2005 and 2010.

For employee amenities, they have put an auto service station on their parking lot. They have a summer hours program that lets people work 45 minutes longer M-F and then quit 3 hours early on Fridays.

Mike says Commitment has been the only factor proven to correlate with high performance, so they have reverse engineered the factors involved in creating commitment.

Forbes just named General Mills to its list of World’s Most Respected Companies. This led to a highly favorable story on WCCO TV. The story also mentions Terri Gruca’s reporter blog, which has a post on other highly ranked Minnesota employers, including…Mayo Clinic.

Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

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