Clorox Reviews

Pros

Open and friendly environment that encourages employees to ask questions and challenge the way things are done. Management actually listens to employee concerns and tries their best to address them.

Cons

Company lags a bit in the technology department, but that is beginning to change. Company has begun investing in technology and upgrading all infrastructure.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership is doing an excellent job of running the company. They listen to their employees and try to address their concerns.

Pros

Environment good work/life balance Good people who help each other. Company has great values Provide good salary. Values employees who produce.

Cons

G.O. sometimes out of touch with real business issues. Sometimes managers are promoted without proven people or leadership skills. Being a California based company hinders talent because many employees don't want to move or work in Oakland.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall, good leadership. Take better care of the most loyal employees. Continue to push decision making to lower levels in the organization.

Pros

There are some very good people at Clorox.

Cons

Long hours by many team members (70-80hrs wkly on average) and little recognition for a job well done. Poor systems add frustration to high pressure jobs. Poor IT support adds unnecessary tension to the work environment. Several of the leadership team members do not have depth in the field they are managing and lack management experience. They are "learning as they go".

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should be hired based on actual work experience and leadership skills, not on the ability to "sell themselves" in an interview or the "good ole boy system".

Pros

they actively promote within but you have to do your work too, such as attaining your education level necessary and learning new skills. you are encouraged to go to other departments to learn and train. It is a very positive atmosphere. The vp is very knowledgeable but also accessible.

Cons

lower management sometimes loses focus and does not know how to grow employees, they get stagnant. However, the company is actively working on changing this.

Pros

Great people
High enthusiasm
Summer Hours
Excellent growth opportunities

Cons

Somewhat conservative environment
Limited internal communication

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to be transparent and open with employees

Pros

Bart is right below our building, great for commuting from other areas of the bay.
Benefits are good, but they recently cut some back, still good though.
There is a lot of work to do but the work hours are flexible and many managers are open to working from home one day a week.
Co-workers are good and it's easy to bond with them.
Decent sized market research budget.

Cons

The insights function I work in is always in a state of flux. I've only been at the company for a short time and I've already seen at least seven major changes in roles, responsibilities and management, which makes it difficult to stay motivated and engaged. I've worked in many research functions in other large and medium sized companies and it is easier to stay engaged when there is a true vision and respect for insights. At times, it can be very difficult to get anything passed through upper management. There is a lot of money spent on research, but it's not always acted on.

The function has a tendency to pick 'favorites', and being a 'favorite' is not determined by your work performance. In my time here I've seen so many great people leave, either by being pushed out or because they realized there are better opportunities outside the walls of Clorox - you always have to continue to prove yourself. There are very senior people in the Insights function (15+ years) that never get promoted and then there are people who are cherry picked from other companies (management favorites) that get promoted in 6 months - 1 year. This causes confusion because there is no clear understanding of what it takes to move up.

There is a very strong Clorox mold in marketing and insights and if you don't fit that mold it will be difficult to gain respect within the organization.

The company culture is can be very conservative, risk-adverse and process oriented. The vacation package is average; however, we've recently been forced to take vacation days at certain times of the year. This is hard because some of my direct reports only have two weeks of vacation and live far away from their families - this year the company forced them to take 30% of their vacation at specific times, which resulted in them not seeing their families as much this year.

Advice to Senior Management

Where is the growth going to come from?
You do a great job of hiring top talent but what are you doing to retain that talent?

Pros

Great people to work with
Summer hours

Cons

Downtown Oakland is not a good location

Advice to Senior Management

We do a good job in hiring but not in retaining

Pros

Good name. Will learn advanced processes.

Cons

Worked 70 hour weeks. Your survival will depend on who your boss is.

Pros

Benefits are good. People are friendly. Depending on your manager, schedules are flexible and sensible. Good place to carve out a cushy corner to work (not too hard) until retirement.

Cons

Processes are inefficient, if not completely backwards. Any change is not just slow, but actively challenged by leadership. Terrible place to work if you're interested in innovation. IT support is TERRIBLE. Clorox outsourced it's IT to HP and obviously doesn't care about the quality of service. Expect 10% of your time to be dealing with India or Costa Rica to get your email to work.

Advice to Senior Management

You say you have a value of "Take Personal Ownership", yet current Clorox culture is fundamentally opposed to this. Every decision is through a process, no one actually has the "D". Anyone involved the process can throw up enough roadblocks to get almost any project stopped in its tracks. Assigning an owner and giving them accountability is what you need if you want to honor your values.

And for sanity's sake, HP user support, SAP support, development/design, etc is absolutely terrible. Dump them. Don't wait, do it now.

Or, if your values are demonstrated by actions instead of words, (meaning make the overall short-term cost/margin numbers look good) then just sell the company and let Icahn break it up.

Pros

Lots of smart people. Drives limited opps for advancement.

Cons

Extremely risk averse and caught in the analysis paralysis trap.

Advice to Senior Management

Think agility. Too much time spent churning to get the perfect answer and presentation. Just do it!