General Mills Reviews

Pros

Quality of people, industry leading brands

Cons

Size can slow down decision speed

Pros

Great people. Many opportunities for cross functional moves

Cons

Politics of a large corporation. HQ in Minneapolis suburbs

Pros

great people at all levels, excellent opportunities

Cons

be careful not to get 'niched'

Pros

Very supportive of work-life balance. The ability to work independently and design my own projects around specified goals. The benefits - vacation days, 401k match, etc. The focus on health and wellness - i.e. access to treadmills to walk on while working on the computer, nutrition stations with bananas, yogurt, oranges, skim milk, and cereal.

Cons

Mandatory masters degree or significant time in service (20+ years, if even then) to gain promotion to scientist/manager levels, yet some technicians are doing the same job as the scientists they work with.

Pros

Smart, capable people in a fun environment working to make General Mills a success.

Cons

GMI is also a very large organization of about 30,000 employees. you could get lost in the fray.

Pros

GM faired the recession well, stable, reasonably safe place to work (unless they decide to eliminate your position as they do periodically get on a reduce head count kick when they show a lack of loyalty to non-management personnel)
Good place to start for young fresh out of college people
Very focused on diversity, great place to be a minority

Cons

I've read a lot of positive reviews and even news articles about General Mills being rated one of the best places to work and I would love to work there. Reading the article and the reviews you realize this mainly applies to corporate headquarters where as Lodi(and probably most manufacturing faciltiies) don't receive these benefits.
Work life balance is horrible. In just the past few years alone, they have launched a large number of very time intensive initiatives at the same time reducing head count and management seems to just expect the work force to work the extra hours to sucessfully do their regular jobs and complete the initiatives as well.
Favoritism is shown towards minorities who receive promotions and are hired in front of more experienced non-minority workers (so much for 1 Culture) and young employees who receive automatic promotions
Management recognizes there some big problems in Lodi but their attempts at a solution are laughable - they do occasionally talk about work-life balance usually in meetings where they are rolling out yet another initiative to load us up with work. The Great Manager Initiative to actually train managers on being leaders was an abject failure not that it was taken seriously by the work force anyway.
General Mills problems seem to stem mainly from promoting inexperienced people way too fast who are in no way prepared to perform their duties. Management across the board in Lodi doesn't seem to know what the core duties of a manager are. They don't oversee their work force, they provide no support whatsoever, they spend all their time in meetings with other members of the Senior Leadership Team or Minneapolis so that they can pass on yet another requirement for us to do our jobs or more work. The plant could be on fire and rather than roll up their sleeves to help you can rest assured they will be standing behind you looking over your shoulder telling you to work faster and reminding you of any mistakes you made.
There are four types of people working in Lodi:
1) Hourly who are well paid and well coddled, we just awarded them an hour and half of breaks in an 8 hour day(unlike Salary people who are lucky to sneak in a 10 min lunch)
2)Young professionals who are there for a short term rotation and will leave in 2-3 years (with a sigh of relief)
3) Older employees nearing retirement (and not soon enough)
4) Middle aged proffessionals who will never be promoted anywhere and are praying for the economy to turn around soon so they can find work elsewhere
Last but not least raises; the past several years have been pathetic even at the max scale on the performance rating, the raises are awful. This was true even when General Mills had a banner year financially.

Advice to Senior Management

1) Learn how to be a manager
2) Support your people they are your most valuable resource
3) Staff up in operations and maintenance - you will not achieve nor sustain your goals with a skeleton crew in these key positions. So many of the problems today stem from the cutbacks in Salary staffing done years ago, why can't they learn a lesson from history?)
4) Get out of your office and onto the floor - know what your people are doing
5) Focus on important things and cut out the nonproductive work (there is entirely too much work just so some one can check a box that it was done)
6) Understand that you get what you pay for, you want to keep good people then reward them.

Pros

If you're a follower......this is a great place to work. Friendly culture that does encourage community involvement. Great benefits for full time employees.

Cons

Cliques abound, and the company culture pits plants against one another which creates an incestuous blend of uneducated, yet blindly dedicated worker bees. You must emerge yourself in the culture of the location or you will drastically stand out. Adoption of out dated ideas and practices is mandatory. Do not buck the set pecking order, no matter how correct you are.

Advice to Senior Management

Understand how hourly employees influence weak managers, and hijack projects. Seniority does not guarantee the most qualified workers, and creates a system of entitlement. Also, examine how the personal agendas of departmental managers and SLT negatively affect production, creative work, and the motivation to perform.

Pros

Salary is good as are benefits.

Cons

Very long hours. Working for the sake of working and for showing off to the higher ups within the company.

Pros

Great people, work/life balance, fun and exciting environment, career opportunities, fair compensation, outstanding benefits, great location, intellectually challenging, fast paced.

Cons

There really are very few downsides of working at General Mills. The average tenure is high so promotion timing is a little delayed but it's well worth it.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the great work at making General Mills a preferred employer and a leader in the packaged food industry.

Pros

Great work environment, extensive benefits and career dev. training, talented dedicated employees.

Cons

Highly matrixed organization, but is effective is minimizing silos.