Cott Reviews

Pros

Good personal relationships with peer employees, and talented people. Reasonable work-life balance.

Cons

Everyone junior to the senior management team is paid beneath market. Even the base salaries for senior management are lower than market, but they get special perks in stock awards. The company has become more stable in recent years, but the CEO is quite miserly with expenditures. You've got to fight for pay. The HR team is not an ally for employees, and it's wise to be cautious in discussions with them.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your teams! Make careful acquisitions. People at Cott work very hard, and assume numerous responsibilities. Everyone I know does more work than they expected when they took their job. Employees deserve to be compensated fairly for that work.

Pros

Flexible boss, not high stress, easy work

Cons

No room to advance, dealing with a lot of people who work from home, not a lot of contact

Advice to Senior Management

No advice

Pros

Pay well and the people are supportive.

Cons

Leadership needs improving and cut down on mistakes.

Advice to Senior Management

get new supervisors and managers that know what they are doing. Workers have the skills but no direction from management.

Pros

Good pay
High tech equipment
Lots to learn

Cons

Could use a better maintenance program

Advice to Senior Management

Keep turn over down enough to make a difference

Pros

The pay is excellent for a company that lacks innovation. Many good people and some really bad HR people.

Cons

Bad systems, lots of firedrills, painful acquisition intergration, bad HR group.

Advice to Senior Management

Servant leadership.

Pros

Lots of freedom to make decisions and have an impact on the business. Fun place to work.
I like the Quarterly performance review system. I have some specific objectives and me and my Director sit down every quarter and discuss how I am doing against them, whats good, whats bad, and I also get to give input on him!
Great recognition program called POWer Program - get points and order out of a catalog. Nice stuff
Benefits are good, not great, but good. They make a nice contribution to Health Savings account.
Good 401K match
Hey, the company is making store brands, so you gotta know in taking a job here that they have to keep cost low!
Our facility does a lot of fun things that lighten up the work.
My boss gives me lots of flexability as long as I get results.
No dress code - so we can wear jeans everyday!
Company has been successful recently and seems to be doing well.
Purchace of juice company should help us get into other products we need to have.

Cons

I dont work at corporate in Tampa and some times frustrating that people in Tampa don't seem to communicate well with people outside corporate. Most people in the company dont work there but seems corporate thinks the company revolves around Tampa. They need to get out more where things are really happening to impact the business. I can tell that my director is very frustrated that he is not included many times in decisions. Senior management needs some trainng in working with people away from corporat. I have never been to Tampa, but I talk to lots of people who work there who hate the office set-up (Japanese style). They are supposed to communicate more with an open office, but people there complain to me that there is really little communicating going on there. Several people in our office have to go there often and seem to always come back kinda depressed.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the business going well!
Get out more to other facilities where the money is made.
Be more inclusive to people who work outside Tampa for ideas
Jerry F has done a very good job turning the business around. He visited our facility and was very honest and open about things. Smart guy.

Pros

Open lines of communication
Friendly and respectful environment
Non stressful work balance

Cons

Limited opportunities for advancement
Company is too cautious when spending money

Advice to Senior Management

Create more opportunities for career advancement

Pros

Tampa weather is the only good thing

Cons

Cott as a concept is good, but management can't see beyond their stocks

Advice to Senior Management

Fire yourselves and allow true marketers to run the company. Competing on price is not an advantage, it is a grave waiting to be filled.

Pros

higher than average hourly wages, and they were constently hireing during the worst of the recession or maybe thats a con also

Cons

very little time off the new and improved medical plan is a joke you will pay a minimum of 150 dollars a week and recieve no help with doctor visits or prescription costs unless you or a dependant is near dead,hourly employees schedule is just random numbers put next to there name that includes 1 day off a week but at about an hour before quitting time on the day before it becomes updated to cause you to work, expect regular errors on your paycheck and going weeks before they finally decide to correct it. instead of punishing those who cause problems and refuse to do there jobs they get promoted. There are a lot of potentially great highly talented employees that have been kicked and walked on so much that they no longer care

Advice to Senior Management

follow the policy make an actual schedule instead of random numbers beside a persons name show people the respect that is deserved. stop saying one thing and doing the exact oposite.maybe even look at some of the other cott plants that have employees with 15 and 20 years of service and try to model ft.worth after those plants. In the past there have been some employees from those plants come in for a week to try to help resolve some of ft.worth's problems and by the end of there week here they would swear to never come back. A happy or even just content employee would be much more productive than one who is beat down/wore out and missing his family that by the way is only 10 miles away.

Pros

insurance is good due to being a union shop

Cons

hours can be bad when you start off due to being low on seniority

Advice to Senior Management

I don't have any advice for management