Pros
I work at the Edwardsville LKV facility, in one of the major programs that has seen consistent growth and success year after year. In my tenure, I lived through and have seen improvements and greatly appreciate the efforts of all that helped make things better, starting with the executive team’s focus on culture first and the empowerment to allow employees on all levels to challenge and voice their opinions but also make a difference by submitting improvement ideas. I have had great support from management, HR and people I work with everyday. Management/leadership is available and engaged on the floor in most departments and employees have a sense of pride working at the facility. The company has great benefits and the benefits have gotten better as WWT stays competitive year after year against much bigger companies. I work with the majority of what I describe as awesome people, with much improved cross functional collaboration between departments and a mentality of teamwork and doing whatever it takes, volumes are crazy at times but the people are what makes a difference and you can see that in the success and longevity of the program. The facility runs round tables and skip levels, also focuses on presenting cultural topics in daily huddles, employee reviews, catering on holidays, recognizing weekly difference makers, engaging in fun contests and even catering drinks & ice cream in hot months, Christmas parties, potlucks, team outings, working on dealing and managing with sporadic volumes from a long term, satisfied customer. You see evidence of people that work hard get recognized and continue to grow and embrace opportunities, a lot of people come in when new and can’t believe how much better it is than previous companies they worked for. The recent town hall meeting delivered with improved subcontractor conversions, reviews and compensation.
Cons
Not much at this location, at times work life balance is difficult and work in progress but secure employment outweighs this if you have realistic expectations and willing to make the sacrifice. Growth has some pain points and having the time to do it all makes it difficult. There’s good transparency but communication can be always more clear and more effective, everyone normally doesn’t communicate at the same level. Overall I see the general cons at WWT that have come out recently as a mix of complacency, entitlement and lack of accountability on multiple levels; things that absolutely do not represent anything from the executive team, especially as they drive coaching peer to peer and management to employees or employees to management. Their drive and humility to build the foundation of this company needs to be enforced, not brought down by people that don’t care or complain. Some do not have a good understanding of the mission and vision and do not practice it, pointing the finger and complaining but never doing anything. It is easy to complain but the hard work and reward is in doing something about it. It is disappointing to see the comments that are out there on glass door, between a mix of empty promises and false expectations. Not everyone is suited for a new position every 6 months and some hop on every opportunity to get pay increase or promotion and leave their managers if they do not get what they want or think they deserve it, some managers are hired and they don’t grow in their roles for different reasons and they affect their teams. For those who care, everyone needs to voice their opinion on how great the company is.
