Procter & Gamble Reviews

I worked at Procter & Gamble

Pros – part-time flexible schedule was appealing

Cons – hours varied by week..therefore inconsistent compensation

I have been working at Procter & Gamble

Pros – Flexable,good mrg.team,support and untill last week good communication.

Cons – Pay was average and to much driving.

Advice to Senior Management – P&G had a great field team of dedicated people but as of last week P&G decided to out source their RetailPulse devision to 3rd. party. Hundreds of people are out of jobs with no explaination as to why this decission was made.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Procter & Gamble

Pros – Flexibility. Offers opportunities for more quality time with family. Home life

Cons – High workloads. Can be frustrating

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to hire talent from within. Several capable and knowledgeable internal candidates get overlooked. Can be discouraging and damper morale and productivity.

I worked at Procter & Gamble

Pros – P&G is probably the ideal place to start a career. For recent grads, you'll receive excellent training, and be exposed to sophisticated systems and procedures. P&G is a very structured environment, which may not truly be appreciated until you venture outside of the company.

Whether you consider your training there to be formal or informal, you're guaranteed to learn the best practices in whatever function you're in. I recommend that new hires immerse themselves in the environment and culture, and soak up as much as possible. There's a lot to learn if you put in the time.

I genuinely enjoyed my colleagues, and I think Cincinnati is an interesting place to live for a period of time. As someone from the East Coast, I think a stint in the midwest was a real eye-opener for me. Yes, the town lacks diversity and is very insular. But living there helped me to understand why people in the region think a certain way.

Cons – Bob McDonald is focused on reducing the layers of management at P&G. The strategy will surely help the company to become more agile and improve decision making. But this also means that the average employee will find a ceiling at Band 3. So most P&G'ers will feel frustrated and eventually loose morale since their careers will stall at middle management simply because there are fewer slots for advancement to Band 4 and beyond. So while P&G hires some of the most talented people in the world, the company doesn't do a great job at providing enough people with room to grow.

Compensation is only OK. Most Band 2's and Band 3's will live quite comfortably in Cincinnati (Mason, Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout, or Westchester). The cost of living there is truly laughable. But the compensation system doesn't do much to motivate employees. In most functions, getting a 1 rating may seem arbitrary, and when attained, it's anticlimactic. And if you've realized that you haven't been anointed to move beyond Band 3 (ie. no international assignment or slow promotion to Band 3), an occasional 1 rating seems like you've just been thrown a bone. Bonus incentives, beyond STAR awards, don't kick in until Band 4 and higher. And as mentioned, most P&G'ers won't rise that high in the company. So most workers in the trenches do just enough to maintain a 2 rating, and not much else.

The benefits have been deteriorating over the years. While this is true at most companies, P&G also suffers from an antiquated profit-sharing system. As time goes on, incoming generations are decreasingly impressed by the delayed gratification that is P&G Profit Sharing. The company emphasizes its historic stock performance while glossing over the fact that the company is so large that it will never see the growth that it saw in the 1980's ever again.

Lastly, being a P&G'er isn't truly realized until you leave P&G. In my new role, my colleagues are visibly impressed with my P&G "pedigree". The company has a great reputation for grooming leaders. But under P&G's current management, the best opportunity to lead is often found outside of P&G.

Advice to Senior Management – Pay for performance. STAR doesn't tie performance of individuals to payout. Employees would be much more motivated by well-defined bonus targets which correlate to cash and equity incentives. This should be available to all Band 3's.

Pay more. I moved to NY after leaving the company and while the cost of living here is ridiculous, my salary jumped by more than $40k, and my bonus payment this year matched my entire profit sharing disbursement from P&G. Managers tend to suggest that salaries are adjusted from coastal scales because the cost of living is so much cheaper in Cincinnati. But they don't consider that the cost of living on the coasts is higher because coastal cities are in much higher demand than Cincinnati. I truly can't imagine taking a pay cut to move from NYC to Cincinnati, Ohio. In fact, I would take a pay cut at my current job to avoid moving to Cincinnati from NYC.

Pay attention. My generation is much more transparent than current P&G managers. We discuss pay, benefits, managers, etc. We want our friends to do well in life. And if we feel that there are better opportunities for our peers outside of P&G, we have no qualms about letting them know. Our transparency should be considered a major threat to the company's ability to retain top talent at band 3 and lower.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Procter & Gamble

Pros – A small business with reasonable compensation and a pleasant work environment. The family who owned the business really did make an effort to raise morale. A lot of camaraderie among the work force, and some great parties.

Cons – Senior Management was not nearly as talented as they seemed to think they were, which was obvious to almost everyone (except Senior Management apparently). The family sold the business to P&G who subsequently closed it down and laid off almost 100 folks in the worst economy in quite some time. They liked to tell staff they were "family", but you do not sell your family.

Advice to Senior Management – Actions truly do speak louder than words and just telling people otherwise and expecting them to blindly believe it is not logical.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Procter & Gamble

Pros – great values, great people, opportunity to grow professionally (dont expect too many promotions - very flat org). Great products and good market share

Cons – work life balance, lack of clear and continued vision - one day its profits, one day its innovation, next day is global expansion.

Advice to Senior Management – get closer to your employees, not only consumers. Be transparent, open and honest about issues and change. re-create that "family" feeling we had a few years back. CUT BACK ON bureaucracy!!!!, it slows us down big titme!

I worked at Procter & Gamble

Pros – Some of the best reasons to work at Procter & Gamble is to network with a diverse group; learn how to become a better manager; and the opportunity to travel.

Cons – Travel and limited variety of available positions that are not travel related.

Advice to Senior Management – Promote more family friendly environments via minimum travel required positions.

I worked at Procter & Gamble

Pros – Pay & Benefits were good.

Cons – Some of the top management needs to go.

Advice to Senior Management – Constant focus on Walmart is demoralizing to the rest of the company and accounts.

I have been working at Procter & Gamble

Pros – Growth opportunities
Work Life balance
Product Perks

Cons – Little opportunity for growth for researcher
Cincinnati is awful location if not from Mid-west

I have been working at Procter & Gamble

Pros – Exposure to some of the best business leaders
Critical lessons for how to deliver to consumers
Very consumer and integrity focused
For the most part, really wonderful people.

Cons – R&D is a bad place to be if you are not an engineer
Ask too much, but not enough in return (in terms of compensation, recognition)
Promotions happen at a glacial pace
The company doesn't move quickly enough because it is stuck in a very conservative mindset. Needs to be more agile.

Advice to Senior Management – Restructure the technical career path to enable strong, capable minds to be fully utilized. As it stands now, I see a lot of talent that is undervalued and untapped. The TCS undermines that which it was supposed to help grow.