3M Reviews

Pros

Money, work from home, hard sell challenging

Cons

Must kiss up to get up

Advice to Senior Management

Look harder at your middle managers and stop having employees review themselves.
Value skill sets, not political correctness

Pros

3M- good brand, known all over the world. Good electronic library!

Cons

No fairs-travels are expensive, only cheap trainings- best inside of the company. Very low rise.

Advice to Senior Management

Give your people the opportunities to develop

Pros

Benefits are great. Family oriented. Willing to help you grow and have open resources. Hours were flexible and management treated you like a person and not a number.

Cons

Lack of communication from Corporate. Flow was slow.

Pros

Everyone is welcoming and encouraging to help you learn.

Cons

The work can be repetitive.

Pros

A career at 3M from right out of school is the best path with this organization. They promote longevity in their staff and there are many 20 year employees. This is a very inventive company and thus the career paths are endless.

Cons

Working in a huge organization can often make one feel like a small fish in a very big pond.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay close to direct reports and help to make them feel that their contributions are valuable.

Pros

Great benefits, great people to work with

Cons

Managers need more leadership development training! More systems training and try to be more transparent when problems arise. 3M, specifically the sterilization assurance division needs to be more forthcoming to customers when failures occur and keep customers aware of potential issues with products.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to be advocates for employees! Go through proper management training and be team players. Offer helpful advice and try to understand products!

Pros

Stability, interesting products, opportunity for improvements

Cons

Moves slowly, innovation and customers no logner the focus

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on your customers and look long term -not just to please stockholders on a quarter to quarter basis.

Pros

The people are truly talented great people. I have worked for 3M for 13 years and it was overall a positive experience that developed my skill sets.

Cons

The compensation is not appropriate based on the level compared to other industries. Promotional opportunites are highly political versus based on overall capability.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more opportunities for career advancement for those who work in remote locations. Compensation for management positions is very low compared to management positions within other companies.

Pros

3M's vast number of divisions provides an excellent platform for one to gain a broad-based exposure in the industry one's interested in.

Cons

Some macromanagement from supervisors, a tad too much politics involved between different departments imo.. salary's average for such a MNC

Advice to Senior Management

Be more flexible, we can definitely plan and manage things on our own, to a particular supervisor.. please be more natural.. we know you're faking your friendliness.

Pros

Good pay
Great benefits
Still had a pension plan, but not for new employees now
Reasonable flexibility in working from home when needed, etc

Cons

Long hours, depending on the job, 60 hour workweeks were not uncommon
Travel, again depending on the type of job
Little accountability for management
Slow but steady downward trend in how people are treated

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your technical employees, they make the company work. Don't be too quick to mock traditional 3M values, and embrace the cultures of other companies, remember that 3M has been around for 100+ years and is currently thriving- this means that the 3M way can't be all that bad.