HERSHEY

Business Strategy

Hershey are mainly known for chocolate, sweet treats and confectionary delights. But they had new sights on their horizon. Their vision is to become the Leading Snacking Powerhouse. And we mean ALL snacks. Over the last few years, they’ve quietly been acquiring companies to widen their offering to include nachos, skinny popcorn and salty pretzels. Having mainly left the three businesses they’d acquired to their own devices, Hershey decided to really go for it. They decided to launch a new arm of their business – the Salty Snacks Division.
There was a lot of excitement and curiosity, but also some skepticism about the impact being part of a bigger more corporate organisation would have on their culture and ways of working.
We ran a series of workshops attended by key stakeholders from each of the businesses. We discussed how their people were feeling about the new division, their existing cultural strengths, traditions and rituals. What we heard loud and clear, is that the four cultures had lots of great things in common. They all had a friendly family feel, they were all innovative category leaders, with iconic brands. As businesses they were all punching above their weight. We used the insight we’d heard to design a series of ‘getting to know you’ cultural moments. Bringing people together to recognize what’s amazing about each business and to celebrate the good that was to come.
We recruited a network of local influencers across the Salty Snacks Business’ key sites. We developed a quarterly programme, equipping them with everything they needed to drive local culture conversations. And helping them to learn new skills and have new meaningful work experiences.
Today, they’re our eyes and ears on the ground. They let the central team know what matters most to team members, as they build and scale a healthy culture across their new division.

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