Elkay Manufacturing Reviews

Pros

Good benefits package. Exceptional employee purchase programs.

Cons

Inconsistent long term goals & vision. Consistently changing strategies. Mind set in certain segments of the business need updated to current business practices. Need updated technology.

Advice to Senior Management

Set goals & visions and follow them through. Promote from within.

Pros

Nice people, nice managers, good benefits.

Cons

Cubes are noisy for working. Co-workers are on telephone discussions all the time. Loud voices makes working conditions difficult. It's distracting and makes concentrating very difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Elkay residential products are too expensive. Our mission statement must be focused on satisfying customer needs and budget (specially in this economy) rather than being focused on the product.

Pros

High integrity with suppliers and customers. Many type of products. Looks to implement new systems and technologies. Tries new things: processes, designs, and offerings.

Cons

Many products directed at housing market. Data integrity and system checks sometimes questioned. Responsible policies and metrics, but some distract from goals.

Advice to Senior Management

A steady flow of employee cross training might accelerate plans to reach goals. Stronger definition and support of core competencies could separate company from competitors.

Pros

Benefits are above market average

Cons

Authoritarian, Political not enough training and development

Pros

Good pay and work invironment

Cons

Trend is to hire from outside

Advice to Senior Management

Stick with a plan and give it a chance.

Pros

Excellent products and decent health benefits. Good location and a nice facility. Fairly clean and safe work environment for employees.

Cons

Cost cutting and layoffs are a given as with most companies right now, however, the trend the last few years at Elkay has been to hire management and promote from outrside. Most of their job histories tell that they change companies every couple of years and have no vested interest in seeing Elkay thrive as they appear to be looking for the next job opportunity at the next company. Management does not give credit where credit is due and unfortunately they have taken credit for projects that regular employees have created and finished. Management preaches teamwork yet there is little to no communication from them and alot of deriding when they do communicate.

Advice to Senior Management

You have supervisors that say openly that they don't have a clue about what they are doing and go to regular employees for advice on how to manage. Find out who they are and place people in those roles that take pride in what they do.

Pros

I do enjoy the people I work with. There is a very good team environment in the Operations and Engineering areas. The benifits are excellent and the owning family does have a strong sense of loyality to its employees and customers.

Cons

The company is driven by Sales and Marketing. They tend to make big promisses of new business and customers if operations can give them this one new product. Operations gives them the product and they sell 10 of them a year or the customer orders are high the first year and then they drop the product line. Manufacturing is forced to jump through hoops and drive costs down to low levels just to keep the plants profitable with the way Sales sells the product. It appears that being 99% ontime in dileveries within a 7 day window from the time of order is not a sufficient competitive advantage to sell by. Engineering and Operations are very strong in this company. Sales and Marketing is weak even though they drive the company direction. Customer Service is excellent also. The Finance team is weak in that they have little control or knowledge of the true product costs. Most don't even know what the company makes. Corporate HR is weak and do not support the branch office/plant locations very well. HR procedures are almost non-existent.

Advice to Senior Management

focus on core comps

Pros

Peers and team members below good to work with. Market leader despite themselves. Resting on their laurels of the past.

Cons

Too many leaders detached from the messy process of managing. Lack of conviction and credibility of sr. management. Definetely passive-aggressive culture last few years with too many new leaders who only want to change things to show they are doing something new but they are not. Also bringing in their cronies from other companies and disrespecting the current culture of 80+ years. Sr. leaders do not have the admiration of they subordinates, really. Good old boy(and girl) beer binging mentality.

Advice to Senior Management

Remove those sr. leaders who are posers and brutes. Create less autopsies of blame. Remove those who don't deliver "real" results and pretend they do.

Pros

A strong company with senior management that sincerely tries to "walk the talk" and live the five values of the company. While they have not yet learned what flex time is, at least at the corporate headquarters, the work load is reasonable and, if you are willing to work full time M-F, you can have good work-life balance outside of that.

While the company is struggling in the current economy, it has been conservatively managed over the year and can survive hard times for a little while. Efforts in the Plumbing Products Division to increase market share were bearing fruit, so that Division should come out of the bad times stronger than ever.

Cons

Takes too long to make decisions. Too much turn over in senior management.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to do a better job of recognizing good work, as well as great work.

Pros

Good work load.People are very nice in general.Pay is ok.the company has started to take more market share from other competitors and looks like it is working.Benefits are pretty good and management usually gives you a lot of freedom to do things.It is in general a good place to work and actually a lot of employees have been with the companies for many many years.A lot of engineers in the company and right now the company is trying to change from a manufacturing driving company to a market driving company.

Cons

Too many changes within a short period of time.Pay raise is limited and there is almost bonus right now.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop changing management and start to develop employees.Provide more training to people.