Boral Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Boral

Pros – The core of Boral lies in its generalist business, as it is one big conglomerate of business divisions.
Boral suits those engineers who want to develop their managerial skills from day one.
It does not suit the engineer who wants a structured career path in engineering per se (design, analysis etc.)
There are many different business units, from asphalt to concrete and quarries, plasterboard, bricks and timber etc You will not run out of things to do and jobs to learn.
Boral takes pride in its General Managers and to climb up the corporate ladder, they expect you to develop a generalist approach in running a business.
You would get exposure to project management, maintenance, contracting, production and manufaturing working on different sites to corporate planning and strategy development work at HQ.
You can very quickly learn about looking at a balance sheet and managing a P & L
Its also a people's business, and you would manage people and teams much earlier at Boral than you would at other "more structured" firms
Its a very flat structure, and access to your GM is as easy as almost anyone else.
Its an open door policy and you would not run out of mentors and people to give you direction.
Training and development is also well structured, as well as defined career paths.

Cons – Just like any other operations business, you are not surroudned by the world's intellectual talents. Working on site and in workshops means exposure to an english language of very limited vocabulary :) and some narrow minded people. It is not an office enviornment in the city where your surrounded by flashy degrees and nice people, eating toasted muffins and drinking caramel flatwhites. Operations are tough, and you will get tested. And you almost really only get one shot at it. First impression means everything. We dont do long hours but we def start early. Working culture is something that would be very hard to change but you might actually see the challenge in that. You will get thrown in the deep end when you start, and you will be monitored. In an operations business you can get left in an area esp when your doing a good job, so you will constantly have to put your hand up and make yourself known to the seniors.

Advice to Senior Management – Maybe consider secondments to management consulting firms, instead of losing some good employees to them who want to cross the bridge and do some of that work, why not offer consultants an operations experience, and get our operations people to consult, and therefore, make them more rounded managers. I would love to have that opportunity presented to me.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend