Unappreciative Management, VERY low wages, extreme workloads.
Pros
The best reason to work at Neogen is to get experience. Benefits aren’t bad, especially dental. 401k with 3% matching. Paid holidays. Paid PTO. Lots of opportunity for overtime. Your coworkers are usually great people. Many catered events, discounts on local sports tickets. Volunteer Time Off. Company raises money for charities through events like 5k races and employee raffles.
Cons
There’s a public Neogen, and the real Neogen. It’s an intensely stressful work environment. Only PTO, no sick days. If you take Volunteer Time Off, you do not get paid extra for overtime worked in the same week unless you make up the 8 hours. PTO requests are very limited for the entire month of May (end of the fiscal year.) Management is extremely disorganized. Constantly pushing to manufacture and release products that are subpar, because everything is on backorder. Trouble prioritizing because every manager feels their product is the most important. Incredible lack of communication between all employees/management, causing confusion, errors, panic. Everyone complains about the lack of communication but no one takes steps to improve it. Lies to public by launching product lines on the market that are incomplete, haven’t passed pilot testing. Inconsistency/failed reproducibility within product lines, with blame falling on employees instead of processes. Management grasps at straws to find problems and demand ridiculous solutions. Manufacture new products using unapproved subcomponents. Management takes turns throwing each other under the bus. Most take credit for employees’ hard work. Works employees to the bone, many working 12+ hours shifts, others working 6 or 7 days a week with no appreciation, and leads to a breakdown of work/life balance. They call this “mandatory overtime.” Easy for some to move up, due to the outrageous employee turnover. Loyal employees passed over for promotions because of employee/management relationships and favoritism. Inappropriate amount of fraternization in multiple departments. Other employees are privately and sometimes publicly scolded. Some managers reprimand employees for having mental health issues, while the managers can act out. Many things done without employee knowledge or understanding. Usually understaffed. Many employees are frustratingly under-trained due to the high turnover. It’s a sink or swim environment, and the lack of proper training leads to mistakes in the manufacturing process. Upper management beats down the ladder until the workers are the ones getting all of the stress. Management does not absorb that stress, causing very low moral. Management pushing up deadlines to appease others, even when they know it is chronologically impossible. Blames worker for unmet deadlines. HR tries to buy your love with Neogen “swag” and cheap sports tickets that are “first come, first serve” only to employees with email. They also screw up paychecks for an unknown number of employees and do not investigate unless there is a complaint. Even then, they put up a fight. Improper disposal of methanol in most laboratories. Neogen creates a shameful amount of waste, only recycles cardboard. Company makes half a billion per year, pays alarmingly below job market averages. Tiny 1% raises on an annual basis. Still expects employees to bend over backward and stay within fake, arbitrary budgets. There’s more, but if you’re still reading, it’s NOT worth it. Many have accepted their fate and end up not caring about exceeding expectations.