Battelle reviews

Too many good 'ol boy circles. No goodies for anyone outside those circles. Excessive layers of management at Battelle. The re-worked benefits package was definitely discouraging. The PTO system really penalized everyone. If abuse was the issue, deal with the abuse, don't penalize everyone. That's management failure. The organization doesn't seem to realize that people with their ideas and innovations are the engine that propels Battelle. Instead, people are viewed as resources. Instead of laying off scientists and engineers, reorganize, retrain, reassign those people. Eliminate the blotted layers of management and useless staffers instead. Battelle seems to have forgotten how to innovate. I keep hearing about how Battelle invented the Xerox process. I think that was 50 years ago. What has Battelle done since? Battelle has been living off of federal government funding for so long, I don't know what will happen now with federal funding drying up. I don't think Battelle has the ability to compete in industrial R&D anymore. Research has become very rigid and inflexible, requiring multiple management sign-offs for even the most insignificant changes. Battelle's motto, "The Business of Innovation", doesn't seem to apply any more.

Battelle idolizes hierarchy. It claims to be in the business of innovation but is just the opposite. Everyone feels the need to have permission to do anything, and managers are risk averse. There is no vision. There is no leadership. Just management. Battelle is a throwback to the modernists of the enlightenment. Management believes that they are smarter than everyone else, and that the organization can be managed like operating a steam engine. They ignore productivity advancements, for example their use of IT is a joke. They can't even operate a library system or even write an efficient app for submitting electronic timecards. Their cost-cutting efforts have incurred higher costs, as mid-level managers do as their told, with no understanding as to why. So they apply the direction incorrectly. Advancements in organization are just as thoroughly ignored. Senior management seems to believe it's running one of Gordon Battelle's refineries. Finally there is panic among senior leadership, as they effectively put their eggs in one basket under Kohrt: government contracting. As gov't work decreases, so will Battelle's revenue. They have no courage to pursue commercial R&D, and no insight how to do it effectively anyway. They won't hire true innovators and producers b/c those people don't follow management blindly.