Pros
Not 12 hour shifts, consistent schedule, uniforms
Cons
Culture: Nixon medical has the potential to be a great company but it is too stuck in its ways. The vast majority of the non management employees are (demographic 1). This of course has greatly altered the culture of the company where the company breaks it's back to appease them ( I get it nobody wants to be sued for workplace discrimination) but it's basically favouritism/babying at the expense of non-demographic 1. For example we play music on Fridays and the majority of it is in a particular language. I have complained about this multiple times so now they will play music in English for like 2 hours and even getting that small victory was like pulling teeth. It is a very clique-y high-school-like environment where the outcasts are left to fend for themselves. I observe this when a new associate is training. The members of the demographic 1 group are trained better, welcomed more warmly ect. This culture is in large part due to the financial incentive for providing hiring referrals. People are just flooding the company with their friends and relatives. HR even admitted to me this was true and it was being addressed. This has gone on for years and I doubt there is suddenly any serious interest in changing this. Obviously verbal communication is a nightmare as hardly anyone except the managers (and the few outcasts) speak English. The low-level supervisors don't. Meetings also take a ridiculous amount of time because of the constant back and forth translating. Due to the persistent language barrier I no longer make an effort to interact with my coworkers. It is frustrating because the company bends over backwards for them and doesn't encourage them to learn English or anything. The company makes us do daily stretches for team building or whatever and has sporadic pizza parties and other superficial activities/giveaways but doesn't seem too interested in solving this deep rooted problem. I am often called out for not participating in group stretches or standing in the kindergarden circle (the leadership is masking this activity under the guise of workplace safety but the reality is we can easily do this on our own). Rule Enforcement: Rules are not enforced equally. Uniforms not being worn, females wearing revealing clothing on casual days, phone use on the production floor, headphone use ect. We have daily meetings addressing these issues. We also wait for everyone to show up before we start the daily meeting and the same people are always late. The manager stated we will no longer wait but we still do. I have wanted to notify HR/leadership of the excessive hugging and rear-end contact and overall unprofessional juvenile interactions between employees but I don't see the point to be honest. Issue resolution: Nixon requires all employees to give monthly suggestions on how they can improve their performance of their job as well as suggestions to improve job safety. Implementation is often very slow if it happens at all. I've made a particular suggestion more than once and got follow up on it (after I asked about it) about a year later. A lot of the time this goes beyond self improvement. Sometimes the process itself or the equipment is the issue. In my experience you are expected to reach your hourly goal regardless and it is a hassle getting major issues resolved. For example if another department doesn't do its job properly you will be expected to fix it while still hitting your target. Rather than the managers investigating and correcting the source of the issue in a timely matter you are expected to over compensate. You will be told "just do the best you can" but your production percentage won't be adjusted to account for the factors beyond your control. This will come back to haunt you during your performance review. Side note daily production percentages for every associate in the department are now being posted on a dry-erase board which I think is toxic and unnecessary as we can easily see that information at our work stations. There are also monitors throughout the plant and the managers can see this info in the office. This is just a tactic to get us to compete with each other in my opinion. Mixed Messages in Expectations Obviously being a production job you have hourly quotas. However this company claims it also highly values teamwork. The problem is these often conflict with each other. If you stop to help someone, you are not producing. However, my production quota on my computer doesn't track my teamwork percentage, it tracks my production percentage. I have been screwed over working with non-team players (unless they're working with their clique) who are only looking out for themselves. I used to always drop what I am doing to help someone but not anymore after being told I was under-performing and that I was receiving special treatment. (??????) The person with the higher number is the one that gets praised, not the team player keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes. The problem is this became expected and other associates became careless, thinking I or someone else would fix their messes/mistakes for them. Leadership would certainly notice this dynamic if they were out on the production floor more. I thought I was being a good employee but I was playing the game by the wrong rules. I guess I have to screw over someone to make myself look good? Coworkers