The best company to work for in America is headquartered in Orrville, Ohio (pop. 8,000), a quiet, tidy town 50 miles south of Cleveland. Employees don't get any razzle-dazzle perks—no pet insurance, no subsidized feng-shui consulting, none of that. It's 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. If Norman Rockwell were to design a corporation, this would be it. In other words, J.M. Smucker & Co. couldn't be trendier.Smucker's gimmick-free management starts with the co-CEOs, Tim and Richard Smucker, who took the reins in 2001. Tim and Richard are popular with their 2,930 employees—they're affectionately known as the "boys"—which isn't too surprising given that the company's stock has had a total return of 100% over the past five years. (They also engineered Smucker'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 boys have made sure Smucker adheres to an extremely simple code of conduct set forth 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, like 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 nine years at Nestlé, Kraft, and P&G combined.
The play-well-with-others approach, as precious 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 ten 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 company 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. For more, see "Atkins World.")
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 too fancy here," says Ted Fry, a machine maintenance supervisor and 21-year Orrville 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 smells make people happy," he says. "What do they call it? Aroma-something?"—Julia Boorstin
