Battelle Memorial Reviews

Pros

Great environment for working easily and closely with great technical people. Innovation is encouraged and rewarded. Excellent technical depth and teaming possibilities in several niche areas.

Cons

Business processes, while currently being revised, are still clunky at best. Lawyers, corporate, and business offices still not flexible and responsive. High laboratory costs passed to clients in extremely high labor rates, making Battelle technical staff too expensive and so non-competitive when bidding against R&D contractors without these overhead burdens. This is being addressed by management, but at a glacial pace.

Advice to Senior Management

Move more quickly on making your labor costs competitive. Learn how to accept risk without a difficult and time-consuming internal review process.

Pros

I like it so far.

Cons

Hard to account for all of my work.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the interning more robust.

Pros

benefits, nice people, creativity, nice facilities, sick leave policy, variety of project work, networking, multiple office locations, charitable donations and activities

Cons

buddy system, people, lack of loyalty, poor feedback from management, outsourcing, complainers, vacation accrual system, poor communication between business units

Advice to Senior Management

Provide proper training to new staff members. Actively work to retain employees and implement meaningful career development programs. Be fair to all employees.

Pros

The connections that can be made and the doors that can be opened by being employed by Battelle are too numerous to pass up. The largest and most extensive benefit package anywhere.

Cons

There is a large corporate disconnect between the general staff and the senior administration. Battelle used to have high job security, but the economy has finally caught up with the largest non-profit organization. All branches are typically paid at scales based on costs of living in Columbus, Ohio. This is ok for the city of the headquarters, but in locations like the DC-MD area, then the pay is half of what is should be.

Advice to Senior Management

Start discussions with the HR department to update the payscales so they're more competitive with other organizations. When replacing senior administration, promote from within the organization instead of bringing in outsiders.

Pros

Nonprofit research organization where maximizing profit is not the chief motivation
Talented co-workers who are proud to provide high quality research to clients
More job stability than at other federal contractors

Cons

As it typical of the contract research industry in general, opportunities for research funding are highly competitive and therefore require high performance by staff and outstanding teamwork. In general, Battelle is well suited to perform in this environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Maintain the worker-friendly corporate culture during difficult economic times.

Pros

Very low stress, people are very nice here. Management is very flexible with scheduling. Work-life balance is valued. There are many oppportunities to work on a variety of projects.

Cons

Management lets deadbeats continue to work here. Work is contract-based so there is some concern for job security. Good performance is not always recognized. You need to network to get noticed.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more feedback and provide it regularly. Career paths need to be provided. I have no idea where I can go in my current position.

Pros

Engineers get exposed to a broad range of engineering challenges. Technical staff are talented and team oriented. Good experience within multi-disciplinary teams.

Cons

Passive aggressive communication style in some groups. Short term perspective driven by need to keep billable hours as high as possible.

Advice to Senior Management

Work to balance short term billable hour needs and pressures on costs with retaining the best and brightest staff. Battelle is best at solving complex and challenging problems and having experienced senior staff is key to being able to meet these challenges.

Pros

salary and benefits
flexibility of hours worked

Cons

little opportunity for future growth

Advice to Senior Management

It seems management doesn't see long tern goals and tends to try to make short term solutions.

Pros

- Flexible schedules: no one really cares which hours the non-administrative staff work
- Opportunity to interact with bright and accomplished co-workers
- Work can be interesting and rewarding

Cons

- The need to account for every moment of your day in 15 to 30-minute increments
- Lack of assistance for junior staff in finding projects to remain "billable" - it's very much a sink-or-swim environment
- There is a clear trend toward reducing benefits and demanding even more from overworked employees in the name of "profitability". This will no doubt increase turnover, and the most talented employees will be the ones to leave when they realize they can make a lot more money (and get more than 4 sick days) elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Battelle is not Wal-Mart, and it should not be run the same way. It's inconceivable that you would take benefits away from employees who have been there for 25+ years, while continuing to pay mid-level managers who do nothing to enhance project work or the company's (former) reputation for excellence. Instead of hiring auditors to tell you how to run your company, you should have used plain old common sense. Think of how much money you could have saved!

Pros

Money, hours, in that order. Management for the most part is disorganized and biased towards certain individuals. Fellow employees are a plus.

Cons

Management is poor. Biased towards certain individuals. Work fluctuates, at times threatening lay-offs which are known to occur every so often.

Advice to Senior Management

Know the work you are managing. How can you manage and not even fully comprehend what you are managing? Do some homework!