Management in Action Tim and Richard Smucker Manage a Great Place to Work According to a study conducted for Fortune magazine by the Great Place to Work Institute, the best company to work for in America is headquartered in Orrville, Ohio (population 8,000). Orrville is a quiet, tidy town 50 miles south of Cleveland. Employees don't get any razzle-dazzle perk such as pet insurance. The J.M. Smucker Co. is a 107-year-old, family- controlled business that is run by two brothers who tend to quote the New Testament and Ben Franklin. It's a throwback to a simpler time. Smucker's gimmick-free management starts with the co-CÉOS, Tim and Richard Smucker, who took the reins in 2001. Tim and Richard are popular with the 2,930 employees-they're affectionately known as the "boys"-which isn't too surprising given that the company's stock had a total return of 100 percent during the past five years. (The vast majority of stocks lost about 25 percent in value during that same period.) The average annual pay for the professional-level workers is $46,267, and $31,518 for hourly workers. The Smucker brothers also engineered the company's purchase of Jif and Crisco from Procter & Gamble in 2002, which nearly doubled the company's revenues to $1.3 billion in fiscal 2003. The play-well-with-others approach, as pre- cious as it comes across to an outsider, has clearly won over employees. "At first I was skeptical," says director of operations Brian Kinsey, who spent 10 years at P&G. "But this family feel is for real." Irrefutable proof of remarkably high worker satisfaction: Earlier this year, Ken Tabellion, a 26-year plant veteran, used his own time and money to erect a monument to the company-a boulder with a plaque expressing gratitude to the Smucker family. Tim and Richard Smucker say that the biggest challenge they have to deal with is to make sure the company's culture stays the way it is. The company may have some rough spots as it absorbs the acquisitions from P&G. Any com- pany that's growing has to figure these things out. (It also has to survive the age of Atkins mania, when sugar pretty much equals poison.) But then, not every company has Smucker's ace in the hole for employee morale: the smell. On a windy day, you can smell what's cooking at Smucker's throughout Orrville-jams, chocolate fillings, the works. "There's nothing fancy here," says Ted Fry, a machine maintenance supervisor and 21-year plant veteran, as he explains why so many people stick around the company for so long. He takes a whiff of the grape jelly that's cooking a hundred yards away. "Maybe the great smell makes people happy," he says. "What do they call it? Aroma-something?" The boys have made sure Smucker adheres to an extremely simple code of conduct set for them by their father and CEO No. 3, Paul Smucker: Listen with your full attention, look for the good in others, have a sense of humor, and say thank-you for a job well done. If nothing else, Smucker brass takes that last directive seriously. Plant supervisors have been known to serve celebratory barbecues after hitting new records; managers routinely thank teams with lunches and gift certificates. There's also the annual commemorative Christmas plate, holiday turkeys, screenings of films in which Smucker's has a tie-in, such as The Cat in the Hat. Tonie Williams, director of marketing for peanut butter, says she's been thanked more in her two years at Smucker than she was in her nins years at Nestlé, Kraft, and P&G combined. Questions 1. Which management functions are men- tioned or implied in this story about J.M. Smucker? 2. Which managerial roles are mentioned or implied in this story? 3. Would the smell of confectionary products in your work environment contribute substantially to your job satisfaction and your willingness to stay with the company? Surce: Adapted from Julia Boorstin, 3. M. Smucker Fortune, January 12, 2004, pp. 58-59.