Case Study: Bay State Milling

For 125 years, Bay State Milling’s purpose has been to provide food ingredients to promote the growth of nutritious, sustainable and accessible food choices. This relentless pursuit of better has spanned five generations of family ownership and continues to evolve as our food system—and the way we eat—changes.

Learnings from our experience with the Culture Excellence assessment

Conducting the Survey

Culture Excellence was selected to conduct the BSMC Culture Assessment

  • Extremely easy to set up

  • Not overly burdensome in the cost

  • Output has all the bells and whistles one could ask for!

  • Anonymous allowing employees to feel comfortable about making comments

Conducting the Survey & Employee Participation

  • Training & Conducting the Survey

    • Intent and importance of the survey

    • Provide survey in appropriate language

    • Hard copy or QR web-based option

  • Review the Survey results with Operations Employees - lead by Plant Manager / Sr. Mgr.

    • Strengths and opportunities for improvement

    • Feedback from employee’s on why did we do so well in some areas and how do we continue to do well

    • Feedback from employees on how we can improve in other areas and how can we be better

  • Management Team follow up and momentum

    • Keep the fire going by following through

    • Monthly tracking and trending

Analyzing the Data

  • Culture Assessment provides visibility

    • Participation

      • employees at site, # employees targeted to complete survey, # employees taking the survey

    • Comparisons

      • Company rating against industry

      • Company rating comparison to each facility

      • Facilities comparison to each other or BU’s against each other

    • Further filtering capability

      • All employees - overall site scores

      • Managers & senior Managers

      • Supervisors & Team Leads

      • Operations Employee

      • Administrative

    • Additional visibility Culture Assessment provides

      • Priority hotspots and risks

      • Positives, barriers, cultural strengths

      • Benchmarking against industry

      • Change over time - important to identify Culture Plan effectiveness over time

      • Employee comments

    • Warning - do not go down the rabbit hole

      • Pick the opportunities that are measurable and achievable

      • No more than 3-5 opportunities to track and trend

      • Managers/Senior Managers must own the data and the Culture Plan

      • Understand if there are certain circumstances at a facility that would drive less than desirable results

        • Negative skewing of results

    • Culture Assessment Bonus

      • Visibility of opportunities that are system wide vs site level - low hanging fruit to address company wide

        • Example: Operational employees understanding of Company Values across the board was much lower than Managers, Senior Managers, and Supervisors

      • Gives the Plant Manager / Senior Manager visibility to the breakdown in ratings from direct staff (Managers, Supervisors) to Operational Employees

        • Provides foundation to build upon

      • Provides Executive Leadership and Corporate Quality Assurance understanding to the needs of the Plant Management Teams

Next Steps

We plan to repeat in 2024 and see the impact of our initiatives and any other changes over time.

A company with a healthy Culture is one that doesn’t just have the programs in place; it is one where active commitment at all levels of the organization exists.

Reference: Campden BRI (2023), Culture Excellence 9th Annual Seminar