Study shows food and beverage CEOs well liked

How employees’ favorable view of management can help overall company goals.

A recent analysis from Owler, a community-based business insights platform, found leaders in the food and beverage industry are well liked compared to CEOs in other industries. In fact, food and beverage top brass had an average score of 71.3 and ranked No. 10 in Owler’s Top 25 Industries list.

Gordon Food Service’s CEO Rich Wolowski came in first place, with Ferrero’s Giovanni Ferrero and Barry Callebaut’s Antonie de Saint-Affrique following right behind.

Owler’s 2017 National Likeability Study based its findings on a favorability algorithm to determine the general opinion of CEOs. Owler leveraged the access to its 1 million users and its global database with 15 million entities as well as its CEO database that includes 167,000 executives globally to produce the results. The algorithm evaluates inputs from employees, followers, competitors and other stakeholders, weighs them differently in the model and ensures multiple inputs cannot be submitted by the same person.

But is CEO likability really that important? Jim Fowler, CEO at Owler, says absolutely.

“Whether you’re working in a job where you have face-to-face contact with your CEO on a daily basis or you’re one of 10,000 floor workers in a factory, your feelings about your CEO will color your feelings about your work,” he says. “We spend half of our waking hours in the workplace, and if you’re unhappy with your CEO, it’s likely that those hours are going to go by a lot more slowly.”

And this can negatively affect the productivity of an employee. Besides revealing information about a specific person’s leadership ability, the larger takeaway from determining the likability of a CEO might signal what is happening internally at an organization company-wide.

“For a long time, transparency has been essential in finance. Now, we’re seeing transparency as a virtue across other industries. And our ratings are simply an extension of that transparency,” he says.

Coming in at the top or the bottom of a likability list like this can inform a CEO of how he or she is being perceived and either make changes or stay the course.

“Better CEOs are better for employees, who are better for businesses, which are better for everyone,” Fowler says.

To read Owler’s results for the food and beverage, please visit this link.

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Debra Schug was Editor-in-Chief of Food Engineering. She began her media career over a decade ago writing and producing broadcast news for both television and radio at the local and national level. She spent many years as the managing editor for two trade magazines in the oil industry and the research editor for an annual petroleum report. She has a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University.