Ecolab Reviews

Pros

The overall respect and dedication of personell.

Cons

The workload can get overwhelming from time to time.

Advice to Senior Management

They are all doing a wonderful job.

Pros

Benefits they provide are good.

Cons

While they constantly throw parties and recognize the office employees, they couldn't care less about their blue collared employees in the warehouse. They only care about making money.

Advice to Senior Management

The blue collared employees are people too, not slave labor. In the 2-3 years I worked at Ecolab FSS, the plant employees (shipping, production) received any sign of appreciation by upper management. Yet, Customer Care would have "Customer Care Appreciation Week" multiple times a year, where the company would by them lunch each day of the week. The shipping department would have at least been happy with a working air conditioner during the HOT Texas summers.

Pros

Great, friendly atmosphere. Great future.

Cons

They can be behind the times especially with technology.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue us on our current trajectory. Things are looking good. An extra week of vacation would be nice, too.

Pros

Friendly staff, good customer service, great benefits

Cons

Hard to advance in other areas of Ecolab, outside of field area you are already in.
The pay

Advice to Senior Management

I think they do a good job and should keep doing what they are doing

Pros

Benefits (but they are expensive)
The Pension plan is first rate
Employee product/stock purchase plan
Nice public transportation subsidy
Continuing education subsidy

Cons

Work life balance needs improvment
Talant pipeline is nice but not followed
Manager are promoted into power positions who do not understand the specific buiness of the division.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit talking about how employees are valued and start acting like it. Hold on to talent and stop letting associates who know the business leave.

Pros

Benefits are actually pretty good. Salary seems reasonable, until you calculate it on an hourly scale. Coworkers mostly a great group. It's just the management that ruins everything.

Cons

Recent management is terrible. I started 9 years ago and was very happy until the last few years. I eventually quit to start my own business, mainly because the management had become so poor.

Managers don't discuss anything with you. They don't want or appreciate any input from the people who are out there doing the actual work. Poor decisions are the result.

Terrible work/life balance. Meager vacation. Always on call, 16 hours per day including weekends and holidays. New management strategy seems to be focused on replacing all the long time employees with new trainees.

Employee morale is at an all time low and is getting worse by the day.

Pros

Company car, benefits, etc.
Possibility for higher commissions is there with new accounts. However, when you accounts leave your territory, your fault or not, your commissions reflect the loss, also.

Cons

Ruin suits and ties with the grim found on the underside of commercial dishwashers in the nastiest kitchens. College grad means nothing. If you are close with sales specialists you can do well, that's basically the only way.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about your priorities. You can't have one division of the company grow and be as productive as it was if you take away the support it needed in the first place.

Pros

Pay isn't terrible, but when the company loses your customer, you lose money.
Pretty good benefits.
Company car, and gas/phone allowance.
Solid line of products to sell.

Cons

Compensation program is extremely complicated, and when trying to explain it to others, they get extremely confused. It gets confusing for TMs too.
Flexible-ish schedule, but when it comes to getting time off, good luck. There isn't much paid vacation, and you still have to take calls while you're gone.
Organizational structure is a disaster - salespeople are also repairmen. It might make sense to have sales division separate from the repair division.
Management doesn't respect employees. They bark orders and rudely make demands, instead of trying to work with employees.
No defined territories, so you'll be competing with your fellow TMs for sales, and three other levels of sales staff at Ecolab - as well as the outside competitor.
Corporate sales initiatives aren't reasonable.

Advice to Senior Management

Restructure your organization. Hire sales staff to sell, and hire maintenance staff to fix and maintain. This would expand the territories, and allow the salespeople to actually sell new business, and keep them out of the repair business.
Define the territories - nobody wants to compete against their coworkers for business in their own territory

Pros

Interesting work much of which is self-directed and self-taught. Support of best of breed, internationally respected company. Car and phone allowance, excellent compensation.

Cons

Required to work with high voltage, plumbing and mechanical components with little or no training. Management more focused on customer acquisition rather than customer retention with consequence of corporate culture that sees customers and low-performing employees as the 'enemy'.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve employee and customer retention.

Pros

The benefits are good and the work schedule is fairly flexible. The products developed are the best in the industry. Customer Service and Technical Service departments are second to none - fantastic! The job is more stable than other companies.

Cons

Pay structure is very confusing and can not be explained the same way by any two people. The field and middle management come across as amateurs with regard to leadership skills. Communication is very poor and there appears to be a huge disconnect between the corporate office and the field management. The company wants to be focused in its mission and wants to develop a satisfied workforce but they do not seem to know how to get there. Organizational structure and policies become counter-productive in achieving their stated goals.

Advice to Senior Management

Separate sales from service functions - focus. Realign the field management - there are people in management positions with no business impact and there are managers that are not leaders. Which do you want? Simplify the pay structure - it appears to some that it has been designed for the purpose of "screwing" them out of their fair pay. While this is probably not the case, perception IS reality.