No single individual makes anything successful in a large organization. It’s gotta be everybody,” says Ted Hawk, CEO of Park Farms, one of the three largest poultry processors in the state.
When Hawk says he knows the importance of every employee’s job at Park Farms, it’s probably because he’s worked it at one point or another in his career.
Hawk, who started driving trucks for the farm in 1977, recalls his first interview with owners Jim and Tony Pastores.
“I said, ‘I’ll give you two years. I’ll give it my all, and at the end of two years, I want to start buying ownership of the company.’ I was 26 years old.”
And a little cocky. But that attitude eventually landed him in the CEO’s office, running a company of 475 employees that processes about 1.2 million pounds of chicken a week.
The Pastores are in the middle of a 6-year transition plan, which will leave Hawk and other managers with ownership of the company.
Park Farms has 2 million chickens on feed at any given moment, which supply the processing plant with 60,000 birds a day. But even at those numbers, Park Farms does not raise enough to supply Summit and Stark counties, Hawk says, as Americans continue to make chicken a bigger part of their diets.
He says the top three processors in the state can only produce about 12 percent of the current demand. Major processors including Purdue and Tyson fill the rest.
With that large of a market, one could assume Park Farms’ growth potential is limitless. It is, Hawk says, “but you have to ask yourself what you’re trying to be. What do you want to be known for? Do you want to be the Wal-Mart of the world? I’d rather be known for quality, and to maintain quality, the bigger you get, the more difficult it is.”
Which is where the employees come in. Hawk says he must have a stable work force at all times to maintain quality.
“You can’t have everybody changing positions all the time, because nobody ever learns. Quality is really consistency,” he says. “The way you maintain that stable work force is A, you treat people the way you would like to be treated; B, you pay a reasonable wage and benefits package so they can afford to live; and C, you consistently work to improve their abilities. That’s a consistent product.”
Hawk spends a large portion of his day tending to those goals. He spends each morning, from 7 to 8:45, in the plant lunchroom, talking to employees. He claims he knows 70 percent of his employees by their first names, and 25 percent of their spouses’ and kids’ names.
“I try to make myself accessible to every employee,” he says.
But that doesn’t mean he’s holding meetings with them in the CEO’s office.
“We’re a very fast-track business, and you don’t have time for formality. The real heart of it is in the lunchroom where people aren’t working,” he says. “You get everything from, ‘My sister-in-law needs a job,’ to ‘I’m having problems with my marriage,’ to ‘That machine out there isn’t working.’”
On Wednesdays, Hawk takes five employees to breakfast. The first thing he brings up after they’ve been seated is, “Let’s talk about any rumors you’ve heard, or anything you want to know about.”
He says he promises to respond with either the truth about the rumor or to frankly tell them he can’t disclose that information.
With today’s unemployment rate, employers have to learn to value employees, he says.
“My advice is, ‘Develop, don’t terminate.’ Part of the reason I have that attitude is that I grew up in a family of 12 kids.
When you’re No. 11 out of 12 kids, one thing you learn how to do is work with people.”
How to reach: Park Farms, (330) 455-0241
Connie Swenson
