A company that has some major culture issues is Kraft Heinz. Kraft Heinz was formed in 2015 when Kraft Food Group merged with Heinz (Raath, 2018). After reading and seeing the videos on GE and especially Apple one can see that their culture is awesome. Along with that, Apple has great diversity and ethics. After Kraft and Heinze merged as one company the leadership saw the challenge of bringing the two companies together. Two major companies merging like this can create challenges such as, maintaining a good culture, employee retention and leadership. When the article was written their stock was down 30%, while many of the employees were and are not happy with the culture within the company. I originally found nestle to be a company with a poor culture because only 70% of employees would recommend a friend to work there. The staggering statistic is that only 29% of reviewers on Glassdoor.com would recommend a friend to work at Kraft Heinz, and that is based off over 2,500 reviews (Raath, 2018). When you see that statistic is really makes you wonder what the issues are within the company. Kraft Heinz has even rejected to showcase the numbers on employee retention, so you know that it’s high. The stock is now down more than 40% over the past 12 months according to an article in April 2019 (Sun, 2019). Not to mention, that in our day and age of healthier foods, Kraft Heinz is behind the ball because they haven’t started developing them.
One of the glaring issues is that they have tried and succeeded in cutting cost of the company’s dollars. I looked up some reviews from past and current employees that stated the culture is in turmoil. Many employees seem to be displeased with the termination of great leaders and upper management and then the hiring of incompetent ones. I know from our readings that having quality leaders at the fore front of any company is important. The culture created at the top trickles down to the lower level employees and can make or break a company. They have issues regarding worker rights. According to Joanna Long, workers rights are underdeveloped with little detail through it’s “Supplier Guiding Principles” (Long, 2019). The policies regarding discrimination and child labor laws are particularly indistinct (Long, 2019). This is alarming because those two principles for any company should be at the top of any policy guidelines and severely goes against any good culture or ethics.
Well I believe that culture starts at the top, therefore the change needs to begin there. Bernard Hees is their current CEO, but he has announced he will be stepping down on June 30, 2019. I believe this is a good first step. They need to get someone into that role who is willing to spend money, time and efforts in fixing the company culture. Ethics is and issue and should be addressed in company policies. Once they get a new CEO it would be wise to bring people in with a proven track record of business morals, ethics and culture. A CEO is only as good as the people surrounding them, so that is where they need to begin.
References:
Raath, R. 2018 April, 19. Kraft Heinz’s culture crisis. Forbes. Retrieved from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2018/04/19/kraft-heinzs-culture-crisis/#7d3861ad250d
Sun, L. 2019 April, 24. 3 tough task for the Kraft Heinz’s new CEO. The Motley Fool.
Retrieved from: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/04/24/3-tough-tasks-for-kraft-heinzs-new-ceo.aspx
Long, J. 2017 April, 21. Spotlight on the Kraft Heinz company. Ethical Consumer. Retrieved
From: https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/spotlight-kraft-heinz-company
Finstein, R. 2017 April, 2017. The importance of company culture. [Company Culture].
Retrieved from: https://www.commpartners.com/the-importance-of-company-culture/
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