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Genuine Parts Company

Engaged Employer

Genuine Parts Company reviews

3.3

57% would recommend to a friend

(552 total reviews)
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Will Stengel

52% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

Genuine Parts Company has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 552 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Genuine Parts Company employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

552 reviews
2.0
May 12, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits, competitive pay, solid company

Cons

The HR department didn't advocate for the employees. If an employee went to HR with any issue against anyone in management, HR would go straight to the director and it was a given that we would be discussing that issue in a managers meeting... and that person went on "the list." There was no such thing as privacy. If HR knows, every manager and supervisor in the building knows. If am employee wanted action, they had to call the toll free complaint line. Management hated that, but it guaranteed that an objective 3rd party would be looking into the issue and your job wouldn't be at stake. Dishonest upper management (lots of character issues), lack of concern for employees, attendance policy for hourly employees appears to be very liberal, but is in fact a trap. I once had to write up an employee for not returning to work on the 4th day after their father died. The management team had an "understood" 90 day rule. If for any reason we didn’t like you, it was almost guaranteed that you would be dismissed by day 90 of employment because "you were not a good fit." Very few opportunities for advancement. The director is an ABSOLUTE BULLY! When he was brought on, he stopped internal promotions and only hired external candidates. This went on for a couple of years until headquarters forced him to promote from within first. He was very difficult to work for, as he was extremely condescending and said on many occasions that we should just be happy to have a job because the unemployment rates were high. There was always an underlying threat when he talked to us. Within the first 2 years of himy being hired, many of our tenured hourly and management staff had been fired or quit. After another couple of years, many of us (managers/supervisors ( resigned because we couldn't take the ever increasing work hours, ever decreasing pay raises and bonuses, and his "my way or the highway" attitude.

2.0
Oct 16, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Stability, decent benefits, decent pay. Great place if you love to eat barbeque!

Cons

Racist, racist, racist, racist! If you do not have a backbone, don't stand up for yourself, and don't speak out against the mismanagement that goes on within this company, then you will be the ideal employee. This is the company for you!. Management looks down on hourly employee's. No growth potential if management doesn't like you. It's a "good ole boy company" Run do not apply for any positions with this place!

2.0
Jul 31, 2014

Mixed bag for IT

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I'll borrow from some previous posts - as GPC has several different divisions and operations under its corporate umbrella, my feedback focuses on those at 3100 Wildwood in Atlanta. Among other groups, 3100 houses IT for the largest division, automotive parts (NAPA) and Shared Services (focused on network infrastructure). This is a very conservative, stable and well-performing company that has been in operation close to a century. As previously mentioned, salaries appear competitive with other Fortune 500 companies, and I agree that the time to negotiate salary and PTO is during the hiring process. The company pays a regular bonus to certain employees based on company and division performance (it is not tied to any individual metrics). Benefits and 401k are in line with other large companies; although, be prepared to wait 90 days to become eligible (not something that's clearly advertised during the hiring process). Work life balance really depends on the group or project that you report to and can vary widely with some groups working multiple weekends. If you're in an area of IT like Supply Chain, Financials (JDE, PeopleSoft), Business Intelligence, infrastructure, there are a lot of good and worthy projects as the company runs on its ability to manage parts distribution to its Distribution Centers, NAPA stores and other partners. For better or worse, the company had a culture of promoting from within, which means many employees have spent most of their career at GPC, or they're part of a recent wave of hires over the last 2-3 years. Although this has provided a pool of very tenured and knowledgeable employees on the business, the company is out of step with many current best practices especially with regards to IT and slow to change.

Cons

For those looking for an IT role in digital, ecommerce, application development, get clarity on what you will be working on and make sure it's a fit or think twice before joining . The company is years behind the competition, industry and best practices in this space and has outsourced the majority of this work to 3rd parties (especially the most interesting and engaging work). Most of the roles advertised in these areas tend to be focused more on operational and support activities rather than on designing and developing great applications and solutions. There appears to be little support for bringing more of this work in-house and IT spend and investment as a percentage of revenue seems low to comparably sized companies. On the people side, senior management has tried to make some strides in changing the culture and updating the processes, but this too has been a mixed bag. Corporate still wears ties, and it was only recently that jeans were permitted on Friday's only for IT. A one day a week work at home policy is being trialed for IT, but the process has been overly regulated out of fear of abuse which leads some to think that senior management doesn't trust it's managers or employees. The mix of career GPC 'lifers' and recent hires makes for a somewhat strange culture. Furthermore, the performance management process is a shambles with no clear direction on performance expectations, transparency of ratings, mentoring/coaching and training. Several quality people have recently left the IT organization due to poor leadership and management.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 552 Reviews

Glassdoor has 603 Genuine Parts Company reviews submitted anonymously by Genuine Parts Company employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Genuine Parts Company is right for you.