FM Global Reviews

Pros

Good bit of free time as a field engineer if you are smart. Use it for profit or pleasure.
The company if flexible with your personal life. When working in office you can arrive late or go home early as needed as long as you get your work done.
Good benefits and 401K plus modest pension.

Cons

Management are often just promoted engineers.
Fondness for tedious and extremely voluminous instructions, and as engineers, for sticking to the letter of them.
Not very creative.
Work is always getting more complicated, complex and regulated.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire outside your box.

Pros

clean environment; parking garage; great food service and on site health club; interesting work; good technology; freedom of movement during working hours; (depends on manager).

Cons

inexperienced middle management; rigid written policies which are not applied equally; interpretation of benefits and polices left to discretion if each manager which may cause unequal treatment and perk distribution; women are second class; staff is undervalued; benefits are used to leverage employment but are not always available when needed, again another "at the discretion of management " process. Executives have many perks as well as high salaries; staff has little perks and salaries on the low end. Many relatives work together so there is an unspoken sense of entitlement; if you are "liked" you are in like flynn, meaning have all the ammenities available to you regardless of qualifications; if you are disliked, consider yourself micromanaged; and will have no job growth whatsoever, even if you have exemplary skills and will eventually be pushed out due to bland treatment by manager. Comments are from an observation viewpoint.

Advice to Senior Management

Review and revamp policies; LISTEN to the staff, they hold much value and insight into day to day operations. Treat others with dignity and you will have their support and dedication in difficult economic times. Provide a true HR advocate for all employees not the "we understand your dilema but we cannot do anything about it" people currently in place.
Don't candy coat the realities of employment by being politically correct on paper but NOT in reality.

Pros

Lots of job stability, Easy to transfer to another Operations around the country & world, 401k match, Pension plan, Company car with bottomless gas tank

Cons

- Base salaries are lower than average. There also doesn't seem to be much adjustment for different costs of living from office to office.
- This is the only company that tries to put a dollar value on benefits when it comes to calculating your total compensation. I understand that benefits cost the company money, but the only compensation I care about is the compensation that pays my bills (i.e. my base salary).
- While there have been no layoffs during this Recession, our managers have not replaced those who have left or been promoted. Instead, they have simply redistributed the workload. This has resulted in a lot of stressed-out employees who probably wish they had been laid off.
- Everyone gets the same score on Performance Appraisals - "Meets Expectations". There is not much motivation to go above and beyond.
- The company has a habit of rehiring those who quit and then giving them a higher job title than when they left. This alienates those who remain loyal to the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire people when you need it. Don't keep redistributing the workload. Offer more competitive salaries, as that seems to be a common complaint.

Pros

Strong and Stable company with plenty of history (good or bad point?). Good Pay and benefits. Corporate talks a good talk. Company philosophy is admirable and brings out the best in employees. If you are analytical and enjoy a diverse range of customers/products, this is the place to be.

Cons

Old saying was you either want to be a Resident "Field Eng" or President. Anything else can be a tough life at this company. Because of the customer base, offices are dispersed throughout the world, thus each are very autonomous. Positive direction from Corporate is quickly watered down and each office interprets and operates as it sees fit. Pre-merger (2000), this was blamed on the various Mutual ownership, however 10 yrs later along with a thin over-site from corporate continues to foster this issue. If fortunate to be a good office, this is a non-issue; however take warning that change is constant. If in a bad office, you can weather it out and hope the cycle is short lived, however it could last a whole career. An average engineering student right out of college with no experience in this field will likely enjoy. If you excel in engineering and have experience in this field, you might have questions which will not bode well for your future or your conscience.

Advice to Senior Management

While likely the most difficult task to complete, the Corporate message, directives, philosophy should be not only disseminated to the various offices but continually enforced and monitored.

Pros

It provides lots of opportunities

Cons

salary low for co op

Advice to Senior Management

hope they hire local ppl,not outsource all work

Pros

Very successful company. Dedicated employees. Great wroking enviornment. People are treated with respect. Top managment is doing a good job.

Cons

Process driven company, which may take some getting used to. But the processes serve the company well, so they're necessary.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the company successful. Maintain it as a great place to work. Maintain the great reputation with clients. Listen to employees.

Pros

This is a very large company - so please realize that the negative & positive reviews are individual experience in a large group of offices.

I LOVE my job. This is by far the best experience I've ever had in the professional aspect of my life. Management in the Field Engineering department seem to always be willing to sit down & go over anything you need to discuss, and are very affirming, encouraging and positive. Considering my experience thus far, I hope to be here until retirement.

Cons

Some types of risk reports are generated using a computer program, while others are used strictly in Word format. I believe that it would be much more streamlined & prevent additional delays (such as tedious work trying to make templates work & gather distribution lists in word) if ALL reports and letters were filtered through the same system that is used for the risk reports - separated by the type of report or letter in order to ensure the appropriate timeliness/guidelines.

Advice to Senior Management

Not much to say. I've had a very positive experience w/management thus far. The only advice I can give as far as my exp is that there are some bouts of micro-management, but this is a very rare issue.

Pros

Awesome benefits, easy work, stable job security, ability to transfer jobs/build career within company if you're proactive, nice perks for engineers & middle management like telecommuting & a company car.

Cons

Women are just starting to move up from secretarial ranks (welcome to 1996??), diversity is somewhat encouraged but chauvinism is rampant, religious proselytizing can make things awkward, salaries are low and management is told to focus on benefits instead of salary, harder to move up if you're not an engineer.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider telecommuting options for all employees, add hybrid cars to the fleet, consider training talented staff for engineering or other positions even if they don't posess all qualifications initially.

Pros

Good benefits and without doubt one of the best pension schemes in the UK. Supportive/caring management, good work/life balance. Excellent career opportunities and very good development opportunities.

Cons

A 'the company owes me' attitude by a lot of engineers who have been with the firm so long that they've lost touch with the outside world. I've been with the company almost 5 years and can confirm this is good company that cares for its employees and offers loads of opportunities. Get real please - it's harder out there than you think - and stop whinging.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more flexible in terms of the processes and systems you want us to use - listen to those who have to use the systems;; they can be cumbersome and frustrating to use.

Pros

Emphasizes work-personal life balance. Great benefits (health, 401K, vacation). Strong customer focus. Good teamwork.

Cons

Being a fairly flat organization not many opportunities to move up.

Advice to Senior Management

Sometimes people who are promoted into certain positions appear to be full of themselves, more than is justified.