Dow Chemical Reviews

Pros

Size and scope of operations - interesting work
Global opportunities

Cons

Pretty bureaucratic
Top management an insider club

Advice to Senior Management

Decide on a strategy and stick to it

Pros

Flexibility. Management is good. Educational Assistance program is an excellent benefit. Hourly and Salary ranks have become less of a gap between them which benefits the company.

Cons

Some of the very entry level employees, SSRP, do not get many benefits, although they are sticking their heads into dealing with chemicals and swing shift. Some newer operators do not get as much as heritage employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall upper management has done great, although it was pretty rocky when the stock dove to less that $6 a share. I think it was a temporary setback and the company is going to do well from its experiences.

Pros

Friendly people, good benefits, safe working conditions, fairness, One of the best places I have ever been employed, and would hope to remain employed for a very long time.

Cons

I really can not think of anything negative to say right now. It has been a good experience for me up to this point.

Pros

Good work atmosphere
Decent compensation
Opportunities for growth
Nice benefits
Tuition Assistance

Cons

Big company with over 45000 employees worldwide..... sometimes you can just be a number. Don't be disheartened because hard work pays off..... sooner or later you will be noticed and will be appreciated.

Pros

-Competitive salary
-Great corperate strategy
-Work with some of the best and brightest in the industry
-Very open and communicative corperate culture. Great communication at all levels.
-Safety. Dow has one of the best safety programs in the industry with process safety pemployees involved in a wide range of international consortiums etc.

Cons

-Performance review methodology causes significant angst amongst employees. Forces people into a ranked system with capped quantities of employees allowed in each rank. Quite subjective and depending on how good of a leader you have, could result in questionable rankings.

Advice to Senior Management

Revamp the performance review methodology. It is universally disliked and not well understood by the significant majority of employees.

Pros

its a sound stable company to work for.

Cons

low base pay for entry level workers and the unavailability of access to over time.

Pros

close to home, the pay, benefits, those that I work with we are like family. For that I am blessed.

Cons

it's a Chemical Plant, the fighting among different groups, the disrespect and bulling that goes on.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice to actually meet Andrew Liveris. Management needs to do more for the "little guy". Instead of hiding out in the Corporate Office they need to actually meet the blue collar worker.

Pros

The best reason I believe to work at Dow Chemical is the true global reach of this company. Where many other companies have some reach abroad, Dow is truly growing its international reach and includes opportunities to travel even at a low level

Cons

It is at the end of the day a chemical company. Many of the processes have a steeper learning curve as chemistry must be understood in some cases to understand the business operations.

Pros

Growth opportunities, business stability, environmental friendliness, in-house skill development, experienced and trust based management, competative salary structures, good benefits.

Cons

Strong engineering based higher education preferences may sometimes filter capable and exceptional candidates from growth opportunities and valuable contributions in-house.

Advice to Senior Management

Seek out more exceptional and company dedicated employees within and promote a "reaching hand" philosophy to support them with less restricted tuition reimbursement and one-on-one coaching time with seasoned Dow managers and professionals to breed and foster the next generation of leaders and contributors. Some branches of Dow (including the microelectronics materials devision) require extensive long-term training and often carry a portion of tribal knowledge that is not easily substituted even with premium higher education studies. Allegro Microsystems Inc is a prime example of successfully investing in employees by means of in-house university training, mentoring, and promoting growth within (for the deserving candidates) resulting in an average employee tenure of over 5.5 years! Prior to outsourcing its Fab operations to China, Evergreen Solar's average employee tenure was only about 1.5 years. Investing up to 12 months of training (per employee) in learning a rather complex, yet very promising new String Ribbon Technology, but inability to create a Team oriented and mission based environment proved to be very costly for the company. Dow is much more mature in this aspect, and my only advice at the moment to our leadership is not to take any floor level employee feedback for granted, as change most often starts from "top down", yet its success is so reliant on how it is embraced, implemented, and respected from the "bottom up".

Pros

the flexibilty and work life balance are hard to beat, the pay is also wonderful, as well as the benefits

Cons

the company is so large that you are basically just an employee. The leadership usually isn't directly involved with your work and unless you are great at tooting your own horn, some accomplishments get overlooked. Also, that can be detrimental to career development and promotions.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on your OWN employees when jobs open up, don't go outside or use contractors. I have seen SO MANY contractors off the street get the job that was in my EDP for 4 years and that I had networked and worked so hard for. That is VERY heartbreaking to watch and surely does not improve employee morale.