Ashland Reviews

Pros

Great local management structure
Good pay
Good benifits
Decent recognition of accomplishments

A good place to work in general, mainly due to local management.

Cons

Poor HR support
Poor IT support
Total lack of direction with upper management

Again, a good place to work on the local level, but upper management leaves alot to be desired in the way of metrics, support, and vision. There never seems to be a consistant direction the business is taking...or if there is, it's not shared with the production side. There is horrible forecasting and component procurement. Production schedules are moved around daily because there is a consistant lack of needed components to complete orders. Hours are very long due to having to work alot of weekends just to make production goals.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to work on finding a consistant direction. Goals are constantly met, but not because of the structure in place. Management needs to recognize the superhuman efforts being put out just to make forcasted goals due to the fact that there seems to be no effort being given to actually putting the proper components together with production.

Pros

Great people to work with, and doing all they can to stay in business. Unfortunately, I was laid off - no fault of mine or Ashland's.

Cons

Large corporation with somewhat dysfunctional decision making
Decent communication through the ranks, but still not sure where they are going.

Advice to Senior Management

Balance the needs of the business with the needs of employees. Communicate where you're going and provide information. It's tough right now just to keep the lights on, but you can still balance a great place to work with the needs of the market.

Pros

- hard to do at this point! -

Cons

Very narrow mind set with senior management - negative impact to ability to make good business decisions.
Extreme debt due to purchase of Hercules businesses
Poor communicators of business strategies

Advice to Senior Management

JJO - you need new blood at the highest levels!

Pros

Ashland Inc. is a good company. I worked there for a few years and liked it a lot. Ashland is a good 8 am to 5 pm environment and many times you do not have to bring your work home with you.

Cons

Some of the down sides of Ashland include the fact that it is an old, slow company. It takes a while for approvals and people are fairly set in their ways. The pay is just average and because of that I think they loose a lot of there good people. Overall it is a good company to work for though.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

The pay scale at Ashland is great as long as you negotiate it before starting. There is a lot of talent within the IT groups at Ashland's Dublin, OH and Lexington, KY offices.

Cons

Managers of IT groups in the Dublin office, with a few exceptions, are completely clueless. Many have no clue what their teams strengths, weaknesses, objectives, or goals are. In some cases you may even be denied a raise because your direct report-to has no idea what your objects are so they can not determine whether or not you meet them to qualify for a raise.

This company reorginizes so often it's crazy. My boss has had six different bosses in the past two years! Promotions are often given based on politics, butt-kissing, and/or how long you have been with the company. I've seen people do nothing but surf the web for almost an entire year and get a promotion or a raise simply because they have been there 16 years.

Moving up is near impossible if you do not "play the game". At one point I asked my former team lead what I had to do to move up in the company and their answer was "kiss my team leads butt." No joke. She'd been playing "the game" for years and had made her way from one management position to another without ever really doing any work for Ashland.

Advice to Senior Management

It's funny to listen to you talk about making the bottom line while at the same time continuing to support supervisors that can't run their team or make appropriate use of the resources given to them.

You need to clean house and revamp your IT management. You have good people; give them good managers!

Pros

In the past the pay scale has been above average. At this point they are tightening up the purse strings (valid) but employees are beginning to see that their loyalty had been purchased rather than earned.

Cons

Senior Management is certainly enamored with what they believe to be exceptionally talented Senior Mgmt decisions! I have been shocked at the perceptions that exist within that level of the organization!

Advice to Senior Management

My advice is for the very top! Need to take a hard look at the Senior leadership and make radical changes. Ashland has many employees that would be categorized as top talent - but the Senior leadership is more interested in getting kudo's for things they don't do. Cut to the chase, get back to basics and rebuild.