General Mills used to be known as "Generous Mills" for their outstanding benefits. Over the past decade those benefits were slowing reduced while many companies competing for the same talent pool increased theirs. Sadly, General Mills benefits are now merely average but the "We're General Mills and we're special" sentiment pervades the recruiting and hiring process.
They take great pride in benchmarking their pay against other companies and boasting about how they strive to hire the best. So if you've done that benchmarking and supposedly know the salary ranges of other companies for a given position, why then do they hire for the midpoint of the salary range? You'd think they'd realize that would get them the mid-point of the talent pool but alas, that reasoning has not penetrated.
The real decline, though, started just prior to COVID. They brought in a new Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Jaime Montemayor. He came from 7-11 and PepsiCo and was never really in the office prior to COVID and as such had no concept of the rather nice, collaborative corporate culture that existed. Whether intentional or not, he started turning the culture into a competitive cesspool. Instead of encouraging others to work together the best rewards seemed to be for those who threw others under the bus. And Heaven help you if you were a director that disagreed with him. Jaime almost single-handedly dismantled the collaborative culture in a little over a year.
General Mills is bleeding employees right now. A lot of their best employees in the technology areas have left or are leaving. Management is freaked out by the departures and are trying to figure out why people are leaving in droves. Unfortunately they haven't thought to really ask those that are leaving.
