Living Our Values From OSI Executive Offices to the Factory Floor

OSI Europe recently executed a campaign to remind our team members what our values look like in action.

When an OSI customer requested a new menu item that hadn't been produced before, Csaba Boga, a Product Development Manager in Hungary, worked with the customer and raw material suppliers to deliver the product, which still remains today on the customer’s menu. "We work together with our partners to find the best solutions to difficult challenges," Csaba said. "We see our partners' success as our success and aim to work in harmony to the benefit and enjoyment of both parties."

When a team lead walked onto the plant his first day at Henri van de Bilt/OSI in the Netherlands, he was surprised to find management at the door to greet workers coming and going during a shift change. "They did this once a week to let people know that they care about them," he said.

These testimonies, among others, were part of a values campaign recently executed across OSI Europe to ensure that our team members understand what it means to carry out our values, from Seeking Partnering Relationships to Putting People First.

As a company that has been operating for more than 100 years, we know how important it is to be intentional about the work we do and how we do it. Our values have driven the way we approach our operations from our earliest days as a family-owned meat market and butcher shop to our present. Yet as the industry has evolved and we too have grown from a local business to one of the world's largest privately held diversified food manufacturers, the way we carry out our values in our daily work has also evolved.

To ensure that our team members — who span the globe and work on everything from engineering and accounting to plant operations and management — understand what our values mean to them, we have always been intentional about communicating our expectations.

To that end, OSI Europe recently distributed leaflets, booklets and posters in seven languages that give employees detailed descriptions of our core values and concrete examples of what it means to live these values across geographies and roles.

Senior Executive Vice President of OSI International Division Mark Richardson, who has worked for the company for 20 years, weighed in to share his views on Integrity. "Although we are a diverse team made up of many different cultures, nationalities and languages, one thing I see everywhere at OSI is a commitment to doing what is right," he said. "We are a company where relationships and trust matter ... We say what we mean, mean what we say, and stand by our commitments. For me, this is what our core value of integrity means."

Simon Preston, a Lean & Operations Excellence Manager in the U.K., discussed what it means to Strive to Continuously Improve. "I believe we achieve so much at OSI because we follow the mindset that 'we can do more,'" he said. "I see this value being put into practice as the production team constantly reviews performance and looks for ways to be better. Using root cause enables them to identify areas of improvement and initiate action plans to reach that goal."

Tatiana Sackmann from the Sales Department of Gelderland Frischwaren-Gesellschaft mbH/OSI in Germany, weighed in on the value Steward Our Resources For Future Generations. "We do not take the trust or contributions given to us lightly and strive to maintain a positive relationship with the people, communities and environments we affect," she said. "I see this value in action throughout OSI, whether at the organizational level or in smaller projects that contribute to our larger goals." As an example, Tatiana noted work OSI has been doing with a heat recovery system that uses residual heat from a cooling system and air compressors to heat water used for cleaning. "Single actions by themselves may not seem like much, but the cumulative result of all these efforts makes an enormous difference," she said.

VALUES POSTER NEEDED

Similarly, single gestures like greeting staff during a shift change or working hard with suppliers and customers to deliver a new menu item might not seem extraordinary in and of themselves. But multiplied across thousands of employees, who carry out a range of actions each day in dozens of plants and offices around the world, they make us who we are.

From our leadership to the factory floor, OSI’s values guide our work, how we engage with each other and how we strive to be the leader in our industry and an indispensable partner in the supply chain now and for the next 100 years.