Smucker rated sweetest employer

J.M. Smucker Co., the jam and jelly maker that employs about 200 in Cincinnati, was named the best company to work for in an annual Fortune magazine survey.

Richard Smucker, president and co-CEO with his brother Timothy, said: "We're honored and surprised, but it's not something we sought. We just try to run our business day-to-day.''

Smucker, based in tiny Orrville, south of Cleveland, is the first manufacturer to top the 7-year-old list.

But the 107-year-old company, which acquired Procter & Gamble's Jif and Crisco a year ago, is no stranger to the list. It has been among the top 25 since the list was first put together and moved up from eighth last year.

Fortune's list of 100 best companies to work for - in the magazine's Jan. 12th issue - is compiled by the Great Place to Work Institute through a combination of random employee interviews from just over 300 companies submitting an employee-opinion survey.

Smucker, which acquired part of the P&G Ivorydale complex in St. Bernard as part of the Jif and Crisco acquisition in mid-2002, eschews trendy employee perks in favor of treating employees by the Golden Rule, officials say.

The play-well-with-others approach, as precious as it comes across to an outsider, has clearly won over employees, Fortune says.

"At first, I was skeptical," director of operations Brian Kinsey, who spent 10 years at P&G, told the magazine. "But this family feel is for real."

"It's a philosophy which dates back to our great-grandfather who started the company,'' said Richard. "People are searching for fundamentals.''

With the Jif and Crisco acquisition, Smucker almost doubled its revenues to $1.3 billion.

Richard Smucker admits that maintaining the company's do-unto-others philosophy is more difficult as the company gets bigger.

But he said the P&G acquisition, Smucker's largest, was the easiest integration it has ever undertaken.

P&G was the only other Cincinnati company on the Fortune list, coming in at 81st, down from 46th last year.

Contrary to popular belief an American company can make money and treat its employees with respect.

As opposed to where I work:

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Dec 05, 2003 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Quebecor Inc. (QBR) and Quebecor World, Inc. (NYSE: IQW; Toronto) workers and labor leaders from 12 countries launched a campaign here today seeking to win a global agreement on labor standards from the company. Called the Justice@Quebecor campaign, the workers and labor leaders vowed to escalate pressure on the company until the Montreal-based Quebecor agrees to respect its employees' rights. Article here.

I understand there were days when many companies looked at their employee talent as their most valuable resource. Sadly, those days are long gone. It seems now the majority of American companies, despite any huge net profits they secure, look at how they can cut costs on operating expenses with job location, salaries and benefits being the number one casualty. It is amazing to think that if the CEO and the board surrounding him simply chose to cut their year end bonuses by 10% to 15% they could cut expenses at a much greater rate rather then thanking their employees for doing more with less by limiting salary increases, bonuses, benefits or outright sending their jobs to a "less expensive" site (Layoff). I know this does not occur everywhere and yes there are companies who do see their employee talent as their most valuable resource. Unfortunately, where I am I am living witness to the opposite being true. I have seen talented professionals discarded like a bad piece of fruit, as if the last 10, 20 years of running through walls for the company meant nothing. It is hard to leave when you have so much vested and I pray to keep my job. I hope one day someone realizes the extra 10% to 20% you can save on my salary, overhead by shipping my job to another site is far outweighed by the dedication, talent and professionalism I place in working my 45-50 hours (not taking lunch) to make sure the work I perform is of the highest quality and the savings produced from same are much greater then the savings off my salary and operating expenses they could secure. I can't say that will happen. Savings on slaries, benefiots and operating expenses show right up on the accounting ledger while measuring the quality of work performed can be very subjective and hard to measure until such time, years down the road, it show's up with large losses but by then I will have already been discarded like that bad piece for fruit.

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