Schneider Electric reviews

After 12 very successful years at Square D resigned because of the direction the company is going. Typical day is spent resolving issues with either production or scheduling and listening to customer complaints. Used to love my job and was highly motivated to excel. Recent changes to Management (Services Division over the last 6 months) have created an extremely toxic work environment which is causing a mass exodus of employees. Seems like people speak out of the sides of their mouths to cover themselves in a failing system. After 12 years of exceeding Sales Targets - Bonus Program modified to take away dollars from the high achievers and award lackluster performance. Promises broken and a lack of ethics dominate the work environment.

You must be a self starter to work at Schneider Electric. Do not expect your manager to have time to help you acclimate to your new environment. New professional employees are given a laptop and a link to the company home page and the onboarding process is up to the employee to discover or should I say, wade through. There are literally hundreds of different links each employee must discover, on their own to do their job. I believe that this is because most managers don't have a clue. This is very unefficient. There is a huge amount of cronyism. To a fault! This has an enormous negative impact on the people that are not in the clique and it distracts everyone from delivering their best possible performance. It seemed to me that there are favorites in every group and if you are not on that side, getting cooperation and support is all but impossible. It is a big company and thus, you can get lost in the masses. My biggest pet peeve, Shared Services - HR and Benefits, Accounting, Purchasing, CAD, just name a few, are all shared services and are in some cases outsourced. So, every employee has to become an expert in those areas in order to find their way through a gauntlet. A simple payroll error can take hours and even days work for the employee to resolve because, there isn't a person locally that could help (or, like in the old days, be accountable.) This has a huge impact on productivity and because it looks like there are savings with shared services, management is okay with it. OPEN YOUR EYES! Your employees are spending more time trying to find the right number to call for health benefit question than they are working on their assigned duties. And you wonder why they are late delivering on their goals. H-E-L-L-O! Anybody home? And, engagement - There is little work-life balance at SE - They want engagement 24X7 in all but the most menial of positions. This is a problem the management refuses to acknowledge because the directors above expect your manager to make it happen. BTW, that manager, when I am working at 7PM, left the office at 5, knowing I would make him look good. This has jaded me and will impact my performance at my next job. From now on, I work to live, I do not live to work. How about you?