Mars Business Culture

Mars, Inc

At Mars, we are proud to be a family/privately owned business with over 100 years of experience. From the time that Frank C. Mars made the 1st mars candies out of his kitchen in Tacoma, Washington in 1911, we have now grown to a mega-corporation and have more than 33 billion dollars in sales from six diverse business segments across over 78 countries ("Mars", n.d.). We employ 4141 U.S. millennial employees, this makes up 31% of our work force (100 best workplaces for milliennials, 2017). We employ over 70,000 associates world wide ("Mars", n.d.).

We have 5 "Principles of Quality" published and distributed in 1983, they include Quality; Responsibility; Mutuality; Efficiency and Freedom. They are the key to the culture of Mars

They result in stronger relationships at all levels. We are dedicated to producing quality products to keep the consumer or "the boss" happy. We expect responsibility from ourselves as associates and support it in our colleagues. Associates receive full respect and support and are rewarded for their performance. Mutuality implies that we depend on the strength of our relationships with consumers, associates, business partners and communities that we live in. We strive to respect the environment and utilize the most sustainable methods for achieving our goals. Efficiency is the standard that we go by. We organize our assets for maximum productivity. We use resources to their fullest and waste nothing. Finally, freedom refers to the fact that we are a privately owned company, this allows associates the freedom to innovate, act and grow ("Mars",

They have uncommon freedom to take responsibility and ownership of their work. Our workplace is open and without walls. Even top executives do not have separate offices, this encourages open communication and the feeling of really being a team ("Mars", n.d.). Transparency is our policy. We openly share our policies, position statements and performance reports ("Mars", n.d.). As a company, we have made changes over the years to improve health and welfare of our consumers as well as contribute to overall global healing of our planet and change for the better. This includes removing artificial food coloring from our human food portfolio (Mars, incorporated to remove all artificial colors from its human food portfolio, 2016); only using supplies that do not contribute to deforestation; obtaining fish and seafood from only sustainable sources: only support humane animal research in small numbers; reducing the use of fossil fuel and water by 25%; reduce emissions by 25% and send zero waste to the landfill, among many other programs (Mars Principles in action, summary 2015, 2015). We have also minimized advertising to children under the age of 12- on television and print (Mars Principles in action, summary 2015, 2015). We encourage and support volunteerism. As part of Mars Volunteer Program (MVP) our associates have provided over 40,000 hours of volunteer work (as