UPS reviews

3.4

55% would recommend to a friend

(36,775 total reviews)
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Carol B. Tomé

36% approve of CEO

42% positive business outlook

UPS has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 36,775 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The UPS employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Transportation & Logistics industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

37K reviews
3.0
Oct 11, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

UPS will invest in your training; for someone fresh out of school, it is a good place to develop solid Excel and Access skills that will help you throughout your career. UPS is also good in terms of work/life balance. There is a gym onsite at the Atlanta corporate campus that offers an excellent variety of classes for $25/month. It is also acceptable for people to come in later or leave early occasionally due to family commitments. I experienced a death in the family while at UPS, and my boss encouraged me to take as much time as I needed to grieve. If you are happy with where you are in life or ok with making very slow progress, it is an excellent place to work. UPS also extends health benefits to domestic partners which is pretty progressive.

Cons

It is hard to advance at UPS. If you are ambitious, you are probably better served working at a company that is experiencing rapid growth. UPS is very stable, very slow to change, and painfully slow to recognize top-performing employees, if at all. People are treated fairly - too fairly if you are a top performer. 3% cost of living increase in a decent economy is pretty standard. If you go the extra mile all the time, the best you'll see is 4-5%. UPS also likes to advertise its benefits, but look at the fine print. While it offers tuition reimbursement, it is capped at $5,250 a year (if you take a full courseload). UPS no longer does 401k matching for employees under the defined benefits plan (not sure if they do 401k matching for new hires). Every year, the health benefits get more expensive and less comprehensive. That is hardly unique to UPS, but UPS has a reputation for providing excellent health benefits, but if you are not extremely careful about what you let doctors do, you will still get ridiculous bills. The culture is rather stodgy. The company does not get the mindset of young people. There are not a lot of women in powerful positions. This is purely a guess, but I'd say that 90% of the people in the corporate headquarters are white men over 40.

1.0
Nov 15, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

UPS is a great place to work if your only concern is to obtain their brand on your resume. To focus on the positive aspects of working for the organization, UPS is the dominant player in the international package delivery category. The company tends to promote talent from within and did not have a reduction in force during the time that I had worked there. The company provides stock grants for performance and maintained a comprehensive benefits package which included product and travel discounts. The company has a strong operations orientation which influences all functional areas of the organization. Also, the company began a work/life balance program to retain female professionals.

Cons

Conversely, everything that you would consider to be the best reasons to work for UPS are its worst aspects. The majority of managers at corporate began their careers as drivers or loaders. These individuals have created an insular culture which is resistant to outside professionals with non-UPS experience. There is a high level of turnover since many accomplished professionals leave the organization within two to three years. The causes for this turnover involve the lack of utilization of their skills, assignment to unsuitable roles, cronyism, and lack of confident, effective leaders/managers. New employees with MBAs are denigrated by managers and frequently leave under unnecessary stressful work situations caused by their managers. Given the insular culture, there is virtually no upward progression for supervisor level employees at corporate. Lastly, managers are rated by their employees through anonymous surveys, which causes managers to try and terminate employees that they believe are rating their performance negatively, regardless if the feedback is valid. Employee surveys of management were less than 70 percent favorable of management.

2.0
Feb 8, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

UPS is full of new technology and career opportunities.

Cons

Once you are in management you are expected to give everything. Middle management is continually given less and expected to do more. If you do not like holidays with your family this is the place for you. Management, even the corporate office, is no longer allowed to take vacation from the week before Thanksgiving until New Years. You can be told the same day to get on a plane and fly across the country to spend the next 6 weeks. Your spouse is supposed understand this and maintain a flexible work schedule at their company so that you can be on call 24x7. Senior management went public in 1999 and those who were around then are extremely well off. Anyone who came in after that time does not reap any benefits, and the decisions the company makes are laser locked on either stockholders or management committee benefits.

Viewing 13 - 15 of 36,775 Reviews

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