It’s Willmar Poultry Group’s 75th Anniversary! As we celebrate this momentous milestone, we have made it our mission to align our 75th anniversary activities with 5 of our Core Values: Stewardship, Trustworthiness, Excellence, Innovation, and Employee Wellbeing. 

The purpose of this blog and all posts going forward through the remainder of our 75th year is to highlight our value of Stewardship. Our definition of stewardship is, “Our investment of time, talent, and treasure will do great things in the long run. We make decisions based on our responsibility to our employees, our customers, our stakeholders and our community.” Some of the ways that we plan on showing Stewardship include: 

• We make innovative decisions for the long-term rather than short-term gains 
• We meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability/success of future generations
• We have the will to persevere; don’t give up, don’t give in, there’s always a solution
• We are committed to the success of the company above our own individual interests 
• We are engaged in fostering a strengths-based servant leadership culture in all of our partnerships 

This 75th year, we have committed to highlighting various acts of stewardship – both company and employee facing. Some examples would be a business decision that will help keep our organization around for generations to come, involvement and giving back to our community, investing in our employees and more. Stay tuned for more to come! We hope you follow along with us!

Over the past year, the value of Stewardship has been highlighted as a guiding principle throughout the organization’s history. While Stewardship wasn’t defined as a value in the organization back in 1945, the idea of decision-making being focused on future decades rather than the next quarter has been passed on from generation to generation.  This value guided our original founders in the early years, guided Ted and Ray over the last several decades, and continues to guide the current leadership team today.  It is also the value that Ted said was closest to his heart, during an interview in 2013.

Over the years, many pivotal decisions have been made that have shaped the future of the organization.  Decisions such as rebuilding the hatchery with state of the art novel technology after a devastating fire in 1978, purchasing the Willmar Regional Treatment Center Campus in 2005 to allow space for our organization to grow, finding work placements for employees affected by the HPAI pandemic, and many more. Ted understood the decisions made by leadership affected not only the future of the organization and those who worked for it, but they also had a huge impact on the community.  Ted and the entire leadership team took the value of Stewardship to heart, and our organization thrives in large part due to this way of forward thinking instilled in the core of who we are.