Mirroring what others have said and as my title suggests "Management is Clueless". Specifically the management teams in White Plains and Charlotte, NC. Since the advent of the ITT/Xylem, the management teams have failed to successfully develop the three water and wastewater treatment companies. Over the past 10 years they have taken these successful companies and ran them in to the ground. Unfortunately this is another case of Wall Street ruining small successful companies. Management only appeases to the "Street" and have little to NO focus on the important things: customers, products and employees. In my opinion if you are in touch with your customers, employees, products you will be successful for your shareholders. Mid-level managers are not respected nor empowered in this organization. The upper management team shows little to no transparency, while mid-level managers are required to be 100% transparent in their day to day activities.
Specific examples of failures:
Recent "restructuring" (corporate lingo for layoffs) exudes the incompetence of the management team. For example they lay off performing employees, but continue to keep rewarding underperforming employees.. Yet another example of upper management not being in tune with day to day activities and operations.
Meaningless positions are created to empower the top heavy management structure of the company. Upper management will not hesitate to downsize the frontline employees, while creating useless and undefined new positions to support the top heavy management structure.
The current three treatment companies are ran by one management team. This team also oversees operations for one of these three companies. Unfortunately this one team is the underperforming group in both sales, margin and market expertise. So, why is it that this underperforming management team also oversees the other two companies? "Fox guarding the hen house"
Yearly bonuses are a joke. Your bonus is NOT based on your performance, however it is based on metrics of the collective treatment companies. Unfortunately this bonus model causes very low morale and does not promote any incentive for going above and beyond.
Yearly reviews are a joke. Upper management does not use the information in these yearly review to help develop an employee. In contrast these yearly reviews are simply a formality of being a part of a large corporation. Upper management always knows best and they will always remind you of that.
Allowing unqualified, lawyers and accountants to source raw materials and fabrications for an engineered product. Unfortunately lawyers and accountants do not fully understand engineering, product design nor manufacturing processes. So, why would you let them source materials and choose manufacturing facilities for an engineered product?
Human Resources should be referred to "Website Resources". Anytime a question is raised to an HR manager, the typical response is: "There's a website for that!". Gee thanks, that helped a lot! Put the Human back into Human Resources!
Please look at all options when considering employment here. Initially everybody within upper management will be very nice, but after some time you will see their true colors. Be very cautious when interacting with upper management, as they will not think twice about throwing you under the bus. This company has a proven track record of loosing experienced and knowledgeable employees, while the underperforming employees cruise right up the corporate ladder. This is a recipe for disaster.
