Strengthening Our Culture of Connection

2022 stewardship report

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strengthening OUR culture OF

CONNECTION

Moving the needle on our stewardship goals requires fostering a sense of purpose with our employees, empowering them to enact change where it is needed. To nurture that sense of purpose, we’re building a culture of connection and collaboration where employees feel free to speak up, share their values and reach out across departments to solve problems.

Moving the needle on our Stewardship goals requires fostering a sense of purpose with our employees, empowering them to enact change where it's needed. To nurture that sense of purpose, we’re building a culture of connection and collaboration where employees feel free to speak up, share their values and reach out across departments to solve problems.

Skill Building with the Tilla-Leadership Program

The work environment within our facilities is already quite demanding; supervisors must oversee worker safety, food safety, quality and more. As such, other skills like coaching, building engagement and trust, and managing change can often be overlooked in favor of the day-to-day operations. But in 2022, we established a new in-house development program equipping our supervisors with those exact skills. Making these skills a priority will help put more of TCCA’s values into practice within our facilities and empower more people within the organization to be agents of change.

Supervisors who complete the program are then encouraged to “teach” the model themselves as well as give advice to other leaders trying this model for the first time.

FULFILLED EMPLOYEES

90%

of supervisors, leads and manager sponsors have completed the program so far.

JEANNETTE ARRABIT TECHNICAL SERVICES SCIENTIST, TCCA

I found the Tilla-Leadership program to be very insightful when leading a team of 28 people. Learning about the situational leadership model and getting to put that into use helped me understand where my employees were at on the grid and understand their needs for direction. This helped me give better direction and more individualized attention based on that employee’s needs.

MEET THE NEXT GENERATION OF TILLAMOOK TALENT

The key to a thriving organization is fostering a new generation of dairy lovers who are invested in our company culture. Every year we invite graduate and undergraduate interns to join us for a 10-week summer internship program that touches on every aspect of our production. From farming to packaging to (of course) product tasting, our 2022 interns got an up-close look at the hard work that goes into making TCCA such a special place to work.

To help these future professionals understand different areas of our business, we invited them to Tillamook for farm tours and a trip to our Creamery visitors center. One of our recent interns from the 2022 class, Rowena Paz Norman, joined the TCCA Strategic Planning Team this year full-time.

Learning on the Job with Tillamook Bay Community College

We introduced a unique program in 2022 in partnership with Tillamook Bay Community College (TBCC). The Tillamook Creamery Work-Study Program is a full-time position at The Creamery that simultaneously pays for two years of tuition and books at TBCC. Like a residency in medical school, the students work with a Creamery manager mentor for the duration of their two-year program to learn the ins and outs of our entire operation. In addition to a quality education at TBCC, the three students in this inaugural program get robust, on-the-job experience in retail, hospitality, food and beverage and operations, as well as a laptop to use throughout the program.