Leadership at Johnsonville know nothing about the basic tasks of the people they are supposedly leading. Johnsonville has coaches means to train, teach, or mentor. This lack of knowledge makes it incredibly difficult for them to be effective coaches. More importantly this makes it near impossible for new members to understand what to do. This leads to longer-term “loyal” members having to “carry” the company. These leaders get significantly more Greater Performance Share “bonus” every month than the people they are blindly ordering around. The good leaders are becoming few and far between. We are adding more leadership positions to do the jobs the current leadership no longer want to do. They are becoming more distant and less helpful. The message being sent is we no longer need to be more efficient and effective at our jobs, we just need more head count. If they were spending their own money, this would not happen.
Johnsonville seems to think you can change things just be renaming them. Employees are called members, slaughterhouses are called harvest facilities and bosses are called coaches. None of these name changes came with any real change. Members are still treated as employees, harvest facilities are still slaughterhouses and coaches don’t teach they just tell everyone what to do.
Masks are back at Johnsonville but not for everyone. The beautiful people in the office areas don’t have to wear them just the grunts on the floor. There seems to be 2 people that determine the rules for this, and they always blame some other organization for their foolish rules. Whether it’s OSHA, CDC or the county health department, it’s never Johnsonville’s fault for forcing these “guidelines” on their workforce. The newest organization to be blamed is USDA. They aren’t leading anything; they are just pushing from behind.
The latest talking point is to Love Your Neighbor. It seems straight forward and nothing you’d typically argue with. That is until you hear how it’s being used. Like the Johnsonville Way, members use these ideas to push their own agenda instead of truly living like a good person or working as a team. They can sure talk the talk but fail miserably at execution. It is because of poor leadership and very high turnover.
I have always thought unions to be counterproductive. They protect bad workers and suppress good ones. We have no union currently, but I believe unions are born based on the path this company is currently on. Everyone is so afraid of lawsuits that they don’t discipline bad workers. An unintended consequence of this is the good workers must work harder to sustain what the protected bad worker doesn’t do for the same compensation. The current leadership lack of direction/knowledge at Riverside specifically has tipped the scales in favor of a union.
In conclusion if you like to do the bare minimum and get away with it, Johnsonville will be a place for you to excel.
