Ball Corporation Reviews

Pros

Ball has a tremendous benefits package.

Cons

If you like larger teams, Ball tends to assemble smaller groups.

Pros

A company with allot of history. A global market leader in its business segment, good benefits for employees.

Cons

Needs better talent management and development.

Pros

Great benefits. Friendly people. True sense of ownership in the company by every employee. Great location. The company believes in personal development and training.

Cons

Two weeks of vacation for starting employees is behind the times. Some senior level managers are allowed to stay in their positions when they are ineffective.

Advice to Senior Management

Ball needs to implement 360 review process. This process would allow scoring of management effectiveness. Ball promotes based on friendships and not necessarily abilities.

Pros

They do care about the people working for the company

Cons

Company is growing to fast

Advice to Senior Management

keep up the good work

Pros

good benefits and profit (EVA) sharing plan, friendly employees, excellent climate and location

Cons

It is a who you know and not what you know culture especially in IT. If you're looking to grow in your career,look elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't think that if someone used to work in State government that they know anything about technology.

Pros

- Compensation
- Benefits (once you become eligible for pension)

Cons

- Not open to change or new ideas. Management acknowledges this and does nothing
- Promotions are questionable, movement up because they like you or you have been with the company for a long time, instead of skills and experience
- People who have been with the company for a long time and wants things how it was long ago
- Silos, no team work with other departments, so bad communication, lots of work to fix something simple, wasted time and effort, complaints of being busy
- HR manager for packaging, needs to improve her people skills since she is suppose to work with people
- Management don't follow their own policies and make exceptions
- They say work life balance but really there is none

Advice to Senior Management

- Move on, the company is no longer a small family company
- Micro managers, trust the people working for you and that they bring new ideas, don't try to make someone exactly like you
- Really reassess the people in management roles because some of them really should not be doing what they were promoted to

Pros

The pay is decent and a lot of opportunities to work overtime. All of my coworkers were great to deal with.

Cons

The shifts were for twelve hours a day and you are on your feet all day. In the summer the plant was hot. Several plant closings.

Advice to Senior Management

Do not forget about your front line people. Benefits have gotten worse but this appears to be common throughout many companies.

Pros

The Company truely cares about the employees. Ball Corporations is also the leader in the Packaging and Containers industry and is poised for growth in the future.

Cons

Poor systems that cannot support the size of the business. Executive leadership that is stuck in the past and still thinks they can run a global corporation using the same old methods that they have used for 135 years. They are not progressive or systematic in their thought process.

Advice to Senior Management

It is time to turn the executive leadership team over to some more progressive leaders that can lead this company into the future. Westerlund specifically is holding back the Administration and HR groups.

Pros

good pay good benefit package

Cons

long hours rotatating shifts lots of clicks among

Advice to Senior Management

move upper management around so u dont develop clicks in upper management

Pros

Many people are long-term (career) employees. They know the company, they are committed to doing a good job, and they work hard. They care about the company and its successes. This is one of the few remaining places where many people work their entire careers.
Ball provides very good benefits for their employees. It emphasizes health and savings for the future. Health care options are reasonable and broad enough to accommodate different needs. Ball pays a significant part of the costs.
Ball still provides a pension plan in addition to 401(k), including match. There is no fixed number of sick days, and my experience is that people do not abuse this. After 5 consecutive days, short-term disability kicks in.

Cons

Long-term employment can engender the "we've always done it this way" mentality. Change is difficult.
Management deficiencies are not addressed in a timely manner. Departments founder while senior management looks the other way.
Growth by acquisition with no defined process for integration has made Ball a corporation of individual entities. There are no common processes, which causes inefficiencies and engenders errors. Each manufacturing plant works differently. None wants to change. There is no standardization, which means there is no common ground and no basis for comparison. Power plays abound.
Old school reigns. Technology is resisted. Attracting and retaining younger, motivated employees is a problem

Advice to Senior Management

Review HR exit interviews -scuttlebutt is they are stuck in a folder and never looked at. Ask HR about the feedback they're getting - and tell them you want the truth. Ask for information from line employees. Review departmental managements' claims. Dig into the details. Look at department trends - turnover, promotions, organization (regular reorganizing, levels of management, direct report numbers). Don't believe the spin.