General Mills Among 50 Best Companies for Latinas
LATINA Style magazine names General Mills as LATINA Style 50 company
08/31/2007
LATINA Style magazine today named General Mills one of the 50 best places to work for Hispanic women in the U.S. As one of the LATINA Style 50 companies selected from a field of more than 1,000, General Mills was honored for its commitment to providing career opportunities for Latinas.
“General Mills differentiates itself from other companies with its top-down support and commitment to diversity, with a leadership team who visibly and actively demonstrate their long-standing championship of diversity and work/life balance,” said Kelly Baker, vice president of corporate diversity at General Mills. “Programs like our Hispanic Network Buddy program and our Hispanic Network employee group provide Latinas with a sense of community where they can identify resources, share experiences and network with other Hispanics throughout the company.
Companies were evaluated based on issues that LATINA Style readers identified as most important to them in the workplace. Among the principal areas of evaluation are: number of Latina executives, mentoring programs, number of Latina board members, educational opportunities, alternative work policies, dependent/child care support, employee benefits, women’s issues, job retraining, affinity groups and Hispanic relations. Evaluations for the 2007 annual report were based on 2006 data.
Robert E. Bard, president and CEO of LATINA Style magazine, says, “Slowly but surely, Latinas are making progress in climbing the corporate ladder. However, we still have a long way to go to achieve parity. As the only national Latina publication focusing on the needs and aspirations of professional Latinas, we have a duty to keep Hispanic women informed about corporate America's best employment practices. We have gone to great lengths to provide a reliable resource for Latinas to evaluate companies, so they can be confident that the 2007 LATINA Style 50 truly represents some of the best opportunities corporate America has to offer.”
The number of Hispanic working women in the U.S. work force exceeds 7.5 million, and the numbers continue to rise. LATINA Style 50 companies employ 4,662,500 employees, of those 306,169 are Latinas, representing 6.6 percent of the total work force of all the selected companies.
An annual awards ceremony honoring the LATINA Style 50 companies will take place on Feb. 7, 2008, during LATINA Style’s Diversity Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. For more information regarding the LATINA Style 50, please visit the magazine Web site at http://www.latinastyle.com/.
About General Mills
General Mills, with annual net sales of $13.4 billion, is a leading global manufacturer and marketer of consumer foods products. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, General Mills’ mission is to innovate to make people’s lives healthier, easier and richer around the world. Its global brand portfolio includes Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Häagen-Dazs, Nature Valley, Old El Paso and more. It also has more than 100 U.S. consumer brands, more than 30 of which generate annual retail sales in excess of $100 million. General Mills also is a leading supplier of baking and other food products to the foodservice and commercial baking industries.
For More Information, Contact:
Maerenn Ball
General Mills
763.764.6364
