Bowne Reviews

Pros

It used to be a very good place to work offering a family atmospere. For the past few years management has gone in a different direction and now exploit hourly employees and offer little in the way of perks or praise for any of these employees. Sales and Customer service have become even more lavish than before offering breakfasts and lunches and tickets to special entertainment events while adopting a certain "let them eat cake" attitude towards the hourly employees.

Cons

It has turned from the Bowne Family, into the Bowne Family Plantation with all client facing employees being the Plantation Owners and the hourly employees being the slaves.

Advice to Senior Management

Do something for your employees as you sell the company to RRD. If you leave them out of the negotiation process, the employees that have stood by Bowne through thick and thin will not receive the same fair treatment as those who have been laid off in the past few months.

Pros

The location is great....located right in downtown Manhattan on Water St blocks from Wall St. The hours weren't awful either.

Cons

Salaries were not as competitive as advertised. The work is very dull and unimportant, a bunch of programing and filing.

Advice to Senior Management

Offer highers employee incentive bonuses. Put more money into recruiting and less into executive compensation. More seminars and employee involvement.

Pros

strong subject matter expertise in certain business areas with technical competencies that complement the SME. Well known among important client base,

Cons

Excessive overhead is allocated to status reporting -- Management tasks should be re-focused on project deliverables. Agile practices have low acceptance.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve competencies of entry level personnel with formal training. Adopt agile / scrum practices.

Pros

Some of the most incredibly hard working people on the worker-bee level.

Cons

Pay is way lower than other equivalent workplaces; Human Resources rules the roost, and unfortunately they are highly disconnected to the frontlines

Advice to Senior Management

Sell it for the shareholders. Oh, that's right - you've done that already, ha!

Pros

Solid benefits.

Solid training department. Training & learning materials are updated constantly and easily attainable. Trainers are highly competent and actually teach, as opposed to just regurgitating outlines or throwing a manual at you and telling you to read it.

Bowne has protocol for work processes that emphasize consistency and organization in the daily workflow. On the composition side, at least, the workflow is pretty streamlined. There is a lot less confusion than at other printers.

Cons

Departments can be somewhat compartmentalized so that you are stuck doing limited tasks. For example, typesetters rarely get to edit or manipulate graphics. Also, all the XBRL work is oursourced in its entirety and there doesn't seem to be any plans to train people on this type of work in offices like New York.

While the workflow protocols are extremely helpful in streamlining and maintaining order, it can mean a lot of red tape in getting a simple task done.

IT services has been outsourced. God help you if you have computer, database, access or networking issues.

The BIGGEST CON of all: Typesetting is pretty much a dead trade; the printing industry is dying; the financial industry is in the toilet and has changed forever. Typesetting in a printing environment for the financial industry? That's 3 strikes. Bowne has an extensive offshore typesetting repository. Most of the work is farmed out.

Advice to Senior Management

You can not outsource EVERYTHING and ENTIRE departments all together and still expect to maintain a high, or even a decent, level of service.

Pros

Benefits Package on par with surrounding area. Senior Management available and listens.

Cons

No respect for personal life/time. Middle management could not be more clueless as how to deal with people. Sr. Management only hires middle management staff that will do whatever they are told. Outsource their entire Local and Global IT department. Minimal layoff packages given to employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Good Luck working with outsourced IT companies.

Pros

Since the job is located in New York City I like the location even though I commute from New Jersey

Cons

Job security is non existing. Financial industry has crashed and jobs are being lost left and right. Need to improve on training for future.

Advice to Senior Management

get a clue. Need to be more involved with employees. Training training training. Why not spend money and retrain current staff.

Pros

Excellent benefits, Paid Time Off and great employees. The work is challenging and great projects.

Cons

Turnover rate is higher. Morale is not like it use to be considered as Bowne Family Values.

Advice to Senior Management

Give back to the employees during good times. When you need to do layoffs, consider contacting previous employees when position opens up. This increases morale in a down-turn economy.

Pros

-Mostly good people
-competitive salary
-clean and pleasant work environment

Cons

-incompetent management
-heavy favoritism throughout departments
-unfair advancement (don't always post available jobs )
-seniority counts for nothing
-untruthful management

Advice to Senior Management

-Head Office (N.Y.) should be doing major investigating of the way company policies and employees are being handled in Toronto.

Pros

The opportunity to succeed at Bowne exists and is encouraged by management. Lots and lots of talented employees can be found throughout the workforce. Senior management refuses to roll over and die when times get tough. Bowne is an equal opportunity employer and a true melting pot -- especially in NY.

Cons

Senior management is easily seduced by buzz words and vaporware. Middle management is loathe to disagree with higher ups for fear of being marginalized or downsized. This toxic environment coupled with constant reorganization leads to the same mistakes being repeated over and over at the cost of millions of dollars and talented personnel. Outsourcing is too heavily relied upon and could result in serious backlash with privacy/security concerns as well as questions about patriotism.

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your seasoned veterans to give good advice, especially those without "Mgr" in their title. They've been in the trenches a long time and have seen fads come and go. Reinvest in current technology instead of trying to "buy the golden goose" that doesn't really exist.