ADP Reviews in Portland, OR Area

Pros

ADP has the most extensive training process that I have ever encountered, which really helps in gaining confidence in a sales industry. The management and coworkers are all very easy to get along with which makes all the difference in work environment.

Cons

Location of the office can be tricky depending on where you live.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to engage employees and highlight successes. Continue with periodic incentives and giveaways, it really helps to boost morale and push results.

Pros

Large company with stability and matching 401k.
five floating vacation days plus Christmas, New Years, Memorial, Independence, Labor, Thanksgiving (6 days)
High percent of nice co workers that respect each other.

Cons

1965 PICK database technology and line printers are standard.
Started outsourcing 30% of research and development to India.
Management focuses on short term returns which lead to decision that do not pan out.
Main product has been under going re engineering for 20+ years and still not complete.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in current technology that meets you customer needs.
Need to fully training your workers current market technologies.
Look at America's long term strategy, your too reactive to wall street.
Management need shaking up too much of the silo effect and finger pointing has frozen management's ability to function.
Need to consolidate offices, currently management is split between two cites and they play games between the differences in location.

Pros

In the large corporate world ADP stands out as an excellent place to work and grow in the first 10-15 years of your technical career.

Cons

Glass ceiling for technical staff. If you want to keep getting promotions you have to plan on switching to management before you get the the higest technical grade scale or you'll get stuck.

Advice to Senior Management

Create technical leadership positions which grade scales higher than xx21.

Pros

Like any large company ADP has it's share of good and bad apples but contrary to the old saying the bad apples don't spoil the bunch. Excellent performance will be rewarded at ADP and like any sales driven company excellent sales performance will be highly rewarded.

Cons

Again, in a company the size of ADP it takes a lot of effort to overcome inertia and there's more than a little inertia. ADP can be slow to react to market forces and political, budgetary and technical concerns all conspire to produce a mediocre product in many cases when a little more effort could produce a world class product.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the feedback from the "feet on the street". Stop thinking that just because ADP is the 800 lb gorilla we aren't vulnerable to smaller competitors who offer excellent customer service.

Pros

Stable company with long term employment opportunity. Managers have continued to stress a work/life balance. The size of the company and multitude of business units allows for diverse work opportunities.

Cons

Advancement opportunities are limited due the long term tenure of existing Sr. Management. There is a history of promoting employees with Sr tenure first over other qualities. The long term tenure of employees throughout the organization stifles innovation or the ability to think outside the box or how it's always been done in the past. Due to the conservative nature of the company, long term tenure is availalbe yet it does not allow the opportuntiy to weed out underachievers through layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to educate yourself on how the rest of the world innovates for success rather than relying on how ADP has done it in the past.

Pros

Benefits (for "associates", or full time employees), competitive salaries, flexibility. They have an actual pension plan, which is unheard of these days outside of the large, dinosaur corporations. If you're going to spend a full career in one company, this is a good place to go.

Cons

Unstable in Dealer Services right now with the reliance upon the auto industry, incredibly bureaucratic. The speed in which ADP Dealer Services moves is very, very slow, and most of that problem seems to be multiple layers of approval. For example, for their software processes, they haven't even heard Agile, and still very much rely upon an old style waterfall software development, outside of some small teams (of which one I worked on).

Advice to Senior Management

Keep modernizing the organizational structure and management techniques. Get out of the early 90's.

Pros

Safe permanent job, good benefits.

Cons

Poor upper management. Little opportunites for advancement. Poor salary increases for lower lever employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Poor upper managemnet communication with divisions. Poor policies to monitor performance and horrible communications.

Pros

Steady job, fair job security, and good learning opportunities. The company is fairly well insulated against huge downturns as recently experienced in US economy. Hard work and long hours are recognized and rewarded to the extent allowed by the company's stingy monetary policies.

Cons

Low comparative pay, must be a self-starter (don't expect much training). Characteristic of company's described by "best reasons", excitement in the workplace will be hard to find here. The regular grind: get more work done, make customers happy, repeat. Watch the years go by.

Advice to Senior Management

Need more risk-taking. Company is too stodgy. Which plays to both the positives and negatives. The employees, the products and the company in general is capable of more, but seems to be held back by budget and over-conservative management.

Pros

ADP is a pretty solid place to work long term. There is low risk of getting laid off, however an even lower risk of you being promoted to anything but what you were hired too do. IF you singled out for promotion, it seems like your constantly the target to get those, to fast track you into the managment "team", regardless if you do well.

Cons

There is no career path outside of managment. Sure there is always the Senior "whatever your title was when you where hired" but that doesn't change anything, and at most you might get a few dollars more on your pay check. Don't expect promotions of REAL merit, and don't expect annual wage increases that are anywhere near cost of living inflation. You WILL be making less in 2-3 years than when you started even tho you got (small) raises each year.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat non-managment the same as your "friends" in management.

Pros

ADP is a very stable company, that provides excellent job security for it's employees. They have good benefits, and the raises/bonuses are regular and predictable. They are also very reluctant to terminate, and will take every measure to attempt to avoid firing an employee. ADP is a good place to work if you need a stable job, that doesn't interfere with the rest of your life.

Cons

ADP is not a company filled with bright minds and overachievers. It is an "old school", conservative corporation in which people are underpaid, and are often promoted not on merit, but simply because they have been employed for X number of years. They are slow to promote, which makes it difficult to find challenge and new learning opportunities. They put more stock in "years on the job" than they do in ability. I can personally attest to this, as an employee who received glowing reviews for four years straight, but was always told that advancement would "take more time".

Advice to Senior Management

ADP would have a much easier time retaining "the best and the brightest" if there was a mechanism in place to fast-track the development of star individuals. I would have liked to stay at ADP, however, I wasn't willing to waste my potential by allowing ADP to hinder my professional development.