Introduction
Business analysis is the process of evaluating businesses, projects, budgets, and human resource management. Comprehensive business analysis often endeavors to establish stability, solvency, liquidity, profitability, and sustainability of the same in a firm.
Thus, this reflective treatise attempts to explicitly analyze business environment in General Mills Company on the facets of competitive advantage, change management, diversity management, recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, and organizational culture. The results are interpreted in comparison with ideal situations and recommendations made based on the findings.
Overview of General Mills Company
Established in 1880, General Mills Company has attained a strong presence in the grain market of America. Headquartered in Minneapolis, this century old company has a workforce of more than 20,000 employees and 200 stores. In the 2012 financial year, the company realized a net sale of $16.7 billion in its local, international, and foodservice segments.
The local segment comprises such brands as Yoplait, Cheerios, Pillsbury, Yogurt, and Betty Crocker. The international segment includes joint venture brand such as Haagen-Dazs. The company fills a niche as the best grain store in America.
The values of this multinational company are innovation, great brands, performance, and corporate social responsibility. In order to establish sustainability of its business lines, it is necessary to carry out segmental analysis of various principles of its operation.
Competitive Advantage Analysis
General Mills Company has an active presence in America with an expanding presence in emerging markets including Japan, and Europe. In the past five years (from 2008 to 2012), revenues from sales have doubled annually. Analysis of liquidity is necessary as it establishes the ability of an organization to maintain positive cash flow, while satisfying immediate obligations.
Financial gearing shows that General Mills Company’s vulnerability to risk is generally low since it has endeavored to offer high quality and favorite grain brands at the lowest possible market price.
With the current statistics expecting the growth of households interested in its products by 10%, the company is in a position to survive in the competitive market alongside the established competitors, such as Tesco form the UK which has established a strong market in the US. However, Tesco is becoming a major competitor.
Operation efficiency and market niche provide an indication of how well a company manages its resources, and employs its assets to generate sales and income. It also shows the level of activity of the corporation as indicated by the turnover ratios.
The level of activity for General Mills Company has remained relatively stable over the five year period despite threat of counterfeiting, increased taxation, competition, and constant change of taste and preferences.
In order to stay afloat, their competitive price, which is half the price offered by its competitors, ensures that it remains the best choice for middle class income earners yeaning for quality and affordable quick fix grain products.
Usually, price/earnings ratio is commonly used to evaluate performance of an entity. However, this depends on financial solvency and market conditions that may influence profitability in a positive or negative way (Modaff, DeWine, & Butler 2008). Specifically, a high earnings ratio in General Mills Company suggests that it is expecting stable earnings in all its major market niches.
As a matter of fact, despite economic swings, the company has embraced properly researched policies to ensure survival. These policies include diversification, expansion, affordability, and quality in the chain of grain brands. Businesses of General Mills Company fall in one industry, therefore having a simple structure. Profitability of the organization has generally increased.
However, the erratic swings in stock performance in the last two year period and, therefore, cannot give trend of financial gearing for the incorporation.
However, the company has a brighter and sustainable future based on statistical growth of market, market expansion, production efficiency and outsourcing, and still very competitive prices which cannot be offered by competitors. In addition, the company has several brands which act as a portfolio balance in case of failure in one brand of grain products.
Organizational Climate
Communication in organizations can be either formal or informal. These two forms of communication are distinct though they are used simultaneously in organizations. Formal communication is the proper and defined process of communication within an organization.
As proposed by Fayol, communication influences innovative and deviating period of organisational economic activities including development of technology, increasing market demand, production and workflow, investment and trade patterns, competition among the rival companies, as well as company’s ability to face threats of global financial crisis (Modaff, DeWine, & Butler 2008).
With the need to establish lean production, General Mills Company has developed a discursive approach in explaining and exploring shared and coordinated actions on roles and channels through which organizational framework formally functions in the exchange of information. This is of great essence in understanding its organizational communication.
Prosci asserts that “communication focused on a company’s strategy and direction, which originates from company executives, is funneled through the organizational chart and changed in such a way to be relevant to each department and manager” (Prosci, 2007, p. 04).
Despite communication is rated as a high corporate strategy, actionable planning is essential to create solution oriented task and strategy implementation secession. General Mills Company is a learning oriented organization. Learning organization engages in active process of learning through promotion, facilitation, and rewarding collective learning results.
The company has three building blocks of learning, such as a supportive learning environment, concrete learning processes, and practices leadership, which reinforce innovation. The managers play a significant role in setting up the learning environment for their employees. This culture has created an ideal climate for innovation and communication (Modaff, DeWine, & Butler 2008) in General Mills Company.
Change Management
Change is relative to a thread. It is intertwined into both the professional and the personal components of lives. It has the ability to steadily occur within and even beyond the environment humans dwell in.
This ranges from occurrences in local and global events, different ways through which structured organizations do business in socio-economic and political governments and at a communal level. In the advent of modernity, advance in complexity and development in relationships cause changes that affect the company in one way or another.
General Mills Company is an adept organization of expecting change needs and adopting change in productivity to reinforce change process in management role. Weick and Quinn (1999) explain that it is through pain that change occurs. The moment one encounters an opportunity, it means that we have to properly utilize it.
Failure to use the opportunity may result in incurrence of higher cost. As a result, professionals obliged to ensure change in an organization should be able to come up with strategies to facilitate the change to take place instead of simplifying on the benefits expected from such innovattions. An organization cannot continue to hold on its status quo, but must embrace positive change.
General Mills has created new brands in order to remain relevant in the expansive market. The speed at which such changes take place in an organization can be described as either continuous or episodic. As the name suggests, continuous change in an organization is one that is ongoing and performed periodically, such as offering training skills to employees.
To improve on the organizational performance, the management Global Mills has adopted strategies that ensure continuous acquisition of knowledge by employees. One way through which this has effectively been implemented is through seminars and workshops.
Episodic change occurs in a piece mill manner. It is discontinuous with an intentional motive. An example of such a discontinuous change was addition of another machine in the General Mills’ production line in 2009.
Due to increased demand for the company’s product, the management decided to raise its supply through adding of an extra machine to boost on the capacity.
Weick and Quinn (1999) assert that while this may be implemented in a short time period, continuous change occurs in smaller adjustments and improvements in daily actions. Reflectively, this company offers an ideal change management platform on its proactive human resource policies.
Recruitment and selection
Employee selection at General Mills is focused to evaluate resumes of applicants for essential requirements which, in this case, include possession of management and analytical skills, besides academic credentials.
In such a case, the process is systematic, and through aptitude test, elimination of those lacking analytical skills is possible within minimal prejudice or biasness. The main idea of a selection procedure is to assess information about applicants in order to determine their fitness for employment (General Mills Company 2012).
Self-evaluation skills in ethics encompass actual and expected outcome. Reflectively, “by promoting the principles of specialization, standardization, and predictability in organizations, classical theorists were essentially attempting to minimize the occurrences of misunderstandings” (Modaff, DeWine, & Butler, 2008, p.27).
Through designing tolerance model levels, the plan at General Mills has remained active in developing dependence of interest attached to activity, creating proactive relationships, and monitoring their interaction with physical and psychological health of the employees.
Eventually, this has been paid off since the workforce has learnt to appreciate the importance of teamwork. In fact, this company has one of the best sales staff in the whole America. As a result, the company has settled on support crew, motivation, and training as intervention route.
Compensation and Benefits
Reflecting on Lewin’s ‘three step theory’, the unfreezing, transformation, and refreezing determine the level of performance in an organization. According to this theory, the first step involves realization that a challenge exists in the organization.
The second step involves transformation of this challenge into a development goal after which an implementation step comes, developing a solution for the challenge (Dubrin 2008). Job testing is an important concept in the discipline of Human Resource Management, in job selection process, especially in hiring candidates for specific job descriptions.
Getting the right individuals for employment is critical in order to achieve organizational goals. In fact, comprehensive and unprejudiced details of applicants’ competence and behavior would be important in the testing for selection procedure, especially to employers who provide job description to applicants.
As opined by Maslow, in the hierarchy of needs theory, “primary needs are basic before tertiary needs and must be addressed in that order” (Spector, 2008, p. 36). These needs include safety, physical needs, love, self-esteem, and room for actualization. As seen among the stunt grain sellers in America, the need for actualization is the driving force for high profit margins in General Mills.
Job satisfaction is a result of a systematic and continuous environmental and personality interaction that fosters the right attitude as indicated in the objectives of this company. In General Mills Company, social and highly skilled employees are allocated the right duties than keeping them in a secluded environment.
When assigning duties, personality checks are necessary to promote self-satisfaction, while improving performance at the same time. In addition, periodic self-evaluation and interdepartmental rotation ensure change of environment. Overtime, the results have been reliable, effective, and profitable to the industry (Kotter 1995).
Diversity Management
In any organization, there is always a laid-down structure formulated in order to keep its staff healthy and stable, while performing their duties of serving company’s interest. An employee with a stable mind performs optimally with little or no supervision.
In line with this, an organization will always work alongside its staff to promote healthy working habits by recognizing and, if necessary, supporting its staff to make a steady commitment in practicing accepted desirable healthy habits in their work departments.
At General Mills, programs are periodically designed in line with objectives and goals on researched conducive work methodology for sustained happy employee-employer relationship.
The methods used at General Mills include direct participation of the employees, who, after interaction with each other, identify hale and hearty workplace interventions passed through a feasibility test for implementation to initiate cultural shift in organization.
There are written rules of engagement, expected behavior, and repercussions for misconduct in the General Mills’ employment contract. During diversity training, these rules are clearly presented to appreciate diversity and uphold integrity in judgment. In the process, cases of prejudice are minimized as diversity develops into a positive aspect of the organization.
Periodically, the organization restructures these goals to meet the needs of the changing work environment and requirements of its staff. Consequently, when people are absorbed and made to feel part of the company’s strategy, they strive to do their best to help the organization and uphold the existing culture with minimal struggle.
As a matter of fact, broader perspectives are incorporated in the displayed character of the organization culture. In the process, the evaluator is likely to classify differences from meaningful revelations established in the environmental culture predominant over the economics, sex, demographics, and race tolerance perspectives.
Generally, gender disparity in General Mills’ workforce remains a challenge in stable diversity management gearing.
Conclusively, leadership assessment, research education, and proactive follow-ups determine success of a diversity training program. These minimize isolation, self-protective mode, and discrimination at the workplace. Understanding simultaneous co-existence of formal and informal communication channels presents complexities and interrelatedness of formal and informal communication.
Reflectively, General Mills Company has a structuralized production, culture, and human resource management system. However, the company should improve on diversity management program since gender disparity is at 25% within its workforce.
References
Dubrin, A. (2008). Essentials of Management. Alabama: South-Western Cengage Learning.
General Mills Company (2012). Company Performance Analysis. Web.
Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Boston: Harvard Business School Publication.
Modaff, D., DeWine, S., & Butler, J. (2008). Organizational communication: Foundations, challenges, and misunderstandings. Boston: Pearson Education.
Prosci, M. (2007). Change Management Best Practices Benchmarking Report. Web.
Spector, P. (2008). Industrial and organizational psychology: Research and practice. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Weick, K. & Quinn, R. (1999). Organizational Change and Development. Annual Review Psychology, 50, 361-386.