Diageo Reviews

Pros

Great HR Processes and talent (outside US) and great brands. Lots of International Meetings to exotic places with first class hotels and flat bed international first class air travel. The management throw awesome parties for days at a time!

Cons

Very political and inconsistent. People not treated equally. Double standards (drinking excessively and fraternising (exec romantically involved with staff). It can be a bit of "who you know and if UPI went to the right school.

Advice to Senior Management

Live the Values. Exec should lead by example. Watch the excessive spending Address the real issues of alcohol in society. Don't preach responsible drinking - educate consumers on dangers a d realsl issues of alcoholism and other drug problems.

Pros

Excellent pay for the job.
Good balance of work and personal life (sometimes)
Wonderful benefits for hourly production employees.
Nice perks. (free liquor)

Cons

They need to learn to treat all employees the same.
Discipline procedures need to be fair for everyone you can't punish one employee harsher than another in similar situations.
Some of the management doesn't take into consideration your personal life outside of work.
The union for the production employees could back us up A LOT better.
Definitely show favoritism towards certain people over others.

Advice to Senior Management

When you say you're going to listen to your employees actually follow through with it. Don't have your employees take survey that you say you'll look at if you're not going to address most issues on them.

Pros

great work, global, open cultures, meritocracy
ability to travel and have fun - this is a booze company man !
great set of values
good people

Cons

changes and restructuring frequently lead to some uncertainty
The exec itself needs to change - to get some fresh blood. Paul has done a great job but time to pass the baton ?

Advice to Senior Management

it is still a very anglo saxon company. this needs to change. need to experiment with asian and other talent at senior levels.

Pros

loads of free food and drinks

Cons

No work life balance. Limited training and development

Advice to Senior Management

Increase manpower and provide some meaningful guidance to new staff.

Pros

Learning leading edge stuff
High level of participation
Great people to work with
Great values and try hard to stick with them

Cons

Complex reporting lines global local functions businesses markets

Advice to Senior Management

Clarity about local global

Pros

Great support for progression. lots of oppotunities & openess around open roles. Great offices.

Cons

Office location - in the middle of nowhere, not enough resources for the amount of work

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more people!

Pros

- Respect for people: the company encourages to treat colleagues with respect regardless of how you feel about them from the start. Shouting, losing your temper and not containing one's emotions is generally discouraged.
- Work-life balance: management respects your personal commitments, no one really counts vacations and time off, can work from home at any time (as long as you get the job done)
- Advertising edge: great place to master communicating emotional benefits, get experience with digital, RM and event-marketing. Not all classic FMCG companies are into all these disciplines. Great place to develop really break-through creative - as most brands share global communication platforms.
- Obsessed with execution: This is THE place to learn a hands-on detailed approach to execution - mostly around BTL programs, sampling, the likes.

Cons

- Consensus: Making calls and getting decisions from top management is difficult. Projects require consensus from a ton of stakeholders. Slows everything down. Conflict is discouraged.
- No ownership: Lack of bottom-up leadership, lack of total project and P&L ownership. It is not uncommon for brand managers to not know what a P&L is and how they drive it. Directors often interfere with executional detail and steal work from reports.
- Strategy: Often drafted by an internal consulting division, or at director levels. Brand managers rarely lead on strategy vs. how it is done in P&G or RB.
- Promotions: No consistent promotion-for-delivery culture. No stringent up-or-out culture. Some promotions seemed pretty random.

Advice to Senior Management

Create a fair and stringent up-or-out culture, promote for delivery of tangible and visible results, encourage bottom-up leadership.

Pros

Makes a great effort in promoting diversity in the workplace. Prides itself on having the leading brands in the industry. Can be a good place to work depending on the location.

Cons

The historical leadership position within the industry has bred arrogance in many employees especially within the UK. Has its fair share of company or consultant generated buzz words that are looked for in the language that employees speak. Functional global matrix organisational design has meant that there is not complete clarity within markets and that budgets are covetted as personal money stores. Lack of decision making by senior managers who tend to remain in situ for too long creating a lack of promotion opportunities. Much of the strategic thinking driven by embedded consultants.

Advice to Senior Management

Take the long term strategic decisions for the company and don't throw the vision plans away in order to meet short term profit targets. The culture is not just words, it needs to walked with conviction.

Pros

Growing company that will develop very strong brands via new emphasis on solid branding

Cons

Passive agressive management style with hidden agendas

Advice to Senior Management

Clear feedback to employees regarding performance so they can gage their work. Avoiding honest feedback, or having personal agendas that disuades solid performance by staff does not help folks move forward.

Pros

Large company, easy to move around geographically. Opportunity to be part of larger strategy of the brand, employees are given the freedom and support to run with ideas and acheive things, as not so hugely bureacratic.

Cons

Bonus and payment structure is outdated, managers have little autonomy to put through bonuses for high acheivers. Culture in some of the london offices is pretentious and a little fake and people can be quite cut throat in their need to be noticed.

Advice to Senior Management

More focus on long term strategy vs short term profit gains.