Colgate-Palmolive Reviews

Pros

Lots of opportunities for learning and growth. Mentoring and growth of employees is a strength of senior management. Company has many opportunities to grow all over the world.

Cons

Can be an overly formal atmosphere. Lots of presentations to senior management. The overall style is not for the faint of heart. Most people who work in product management are very smart and very demanding.

Pros

Family friendly; good benefits; flexible hours; nice offices; nice people; easy work; proud of the products we manufacturel

Cons

Recently has become very political. Has caved to the recession mentality of shipping jobs off to India and Mexico. Sad.

Advice to Senior Management

You have a great group of people here and you are doing very well. Why do you want to ruin the atmosphere and fuel the recession by shipping jobs out to Mexico and India? I would suggest cutting your bonuses back a little instead. FOR SHAME!!!!!!

Pros

Good place to gain international exposure as 80% (and rising agressively) of business is outside US
Great place for women and minorities.
If you have a good manager, you can obtain interesting projects.

Cons

Steadily reducing benefits and training opportunites for years.
Heavily offshoring both development and manufacturing.
HR is completely unresponsive to employees and applicants, a blessing since their information often conflicts.
Excuses given for arbitrarily promoting or not promoting personnel border on insanity.
Though they preach "Managing with Respect", managers can give poor reviews without any explanation of reasons to employees with great long term records.

Advice to Senior Management

Luckily they killed the old HR slogan "Becoming the Best Place to Work". It was very good, but the heavy voluntary attrition of younger workers should indicate the lack of opportunities recently is apparent. It's sad to have seen the decline in morale. Great job keeping the stock price up though!

Pros

Opportunity to work abroad,
Salary/benefits

Cons

The company claims to be a caring company. It is, if you play the right political games and are in the "in" crowd. Don't complain about anything,or you will be treated as a second class citizen, and you will find yourself at the bottom of the pile when the far and few between promos come around. Company does a good job of bait and switch. Great compensation, but little of anything else UNLESS you are one of the chosen ones. Leaders with the most obnoxious management styles are rewarded. Those who do the right thing are NOT appreciated. Company is extremely risk averse and relies on it's signature brand to keep it going. They are definitely followers rather than leaders. I would not recommend working at Colgate unless you have a kiss ass mentality and enjoy stepping on others to make yourself look good. It was a very disappointing and unrewarding experience. Definitely glad I left.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a serious look at your management. There is some very unethical behavior, and that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. A caring company? That is a joke!

Pros

Diverse culture - truly a global company; excellent work-life balance; great products and opportunity to be a part of consumer product trends; opportunity to travel if desired ; mentor program; overall good benefits and perks.

Cons

Limited opportunites to transfer to other departments unless you are willing to work overseas.
Salaries aren't as competitive as others in the industry,.

Advice to Senior Management

Offer more promotional and advancement opportunities to employees willing to learn and work hard, irregardless of educational background.

Pros

Good benefits, pay, work life balance was okay. Fun events at facility.

Cons

Most managers are long tenured and regardless of what they do they seem to get away with it.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house and get fresh blood in the organization.

Pros

Stable Company
Recognizable name
Great learning opportunity - you can learn from the best
Intelligent employees
Good benefits, including excellent dental plan and discounted product
Great location in NYC

Cons

Long-tenured employees are resistant to change
Constant need to watch your back
Relatively low pay for non-execs
Red tape
Poor work-life balance
Limited promotion opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

The general environment needs to become a little more relaxed, which can actually help improve efficiency. Company policies could stand to become a little less rigid.

Pros

Opportunity to move to different areas within the organization
A highly regarded company, that lives its core values of respecting people
An engaged senior leadership and lots of smart, fun people

Cons

In order to shine you have to put in a lot of time
Culture is nice but many are workaholics
Extremely lean, brand marketing driven company

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more people to support your brand marketing function

Pros

The engineers are very serious about their jobs. They are always busy, either out on the floor or in a meeting, but if you schedule your time well, they will sit down and explain what you need to learn with you.

Give big responsibility to interns.

Cons

Morristown location is horrible. The town is dead

Pros

Highly ethical company with a strong compensation package, including benefits.

Cons

Requiring a college degree for employees to advance to higher levels even though they have a proven track record and performance