Harley-Davidson Reviews

Pros

There is great brand culture. The company has a lot of love for their products and a huge drive to keep their customers satisfied.

Cons

There is a very strong political structure, and during my time there the company was going through a huge restructuring process. It was difficult on many employees, as a lot were worried about job security.

Advice to Senior Management

I feel like the company could have been a lot more open about the changes they were making as a whole. I feel like many employees were unsure about their future because they kept hearing about people being replaced. OVerall, it didn't seem like a very stable place to work.

Pros

- Pay for older Employees is above average.
- Benefits are in par with similar size companies.
- Working conditions are good.
- Middle management is not overbearing.
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Cons

- Senior management has no respect for its skilled labor force.
- New hires have to do same work as current employees for less pay.
- Union has been "Busted", so workers have to live with whatever company offers. (Or they'll Move!)
- You must fill out surveys until you are "Happy" with the way the company is run. (Or they'll Move!)
- Worker moral has been systematically destroyed by the new big business approach.
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Advice to Senior Management

Unless you are purposely designing the plant in Milwaukee for failure, changes need to be made. A World Class Manufacturing Company would stock the parts it needs to keep its machines running. Too much inventory? How much does it cost to shut the line down or pay for endless hours of overtime. When there is overtime the workers are told they need to bring the hours down.
This brings us to worker moral which the company went out of its way to shatter and then produced surveys to show the world how happy we were. When the surveys failed you shortened the content and re-engineered the questions, when this failed we were told not to lie on the survey but if they didn't improve a new motor may not be made here.
The Union was busted through the use of threats, and bribes to laid-off workers and then the COO gloats that he has the keys to the company back. And you want high moral?
The workers are told untrained people will be brought in to do their jobs, like anyone can do the job they spent decades learning. And you want high moral?
What this company needs is the leadership of old that respected the talents and input of its workers. The experience workers that you are so eager to shove out the door are the same people that helped to create, improve and qualify the processes and machining techniques that got this company to where it is today.

Pros

Great way to learn to sell to a variety of different people.

Cons

Not a very professional environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Communication is key to a good work place.

Pros

Exciting product and very talented people. Best in class facility and tools in engineering. Pay and benefits are slightly above average but dropping every year. H-D used to be a great place to work.

Cons

Engineers treated as a plug & play resource. Assignments are made without regard to interests or career goals. Engineering leadership is old boy network of clones that all think and act the same. Think and act like them or you are gone. Lots of change, which is necessary but no change management or consideration of the impact on people. No work/life balance. It has been a rough three years with at least a year of pain remaining.

Advice to Senior Management

I hope outsourcing everything including engineering works long term. It should be great for stock value short term.
People matter, that used to be what made H-D a great company.

Pros

Great product and customers. Very talented and dedicated employees who care about the customer, product, and each other. Casual dress code.

Cons

Employees on all levels are treated as disposable and interchangeable. Personal accomplishments are devalued and not properly rewarded. Very poor working environment, plagued with distrust, fear, and poor leadership.

Engineers are treated very badly. Many experienced and high performing engineers were recently randomly demoted and given substantial paycuts without any explanation, and in some cases replaced by much younger and less qualified colleagues. Leadership communication with employees is very impersonal, one-directional, insincere, and condescending. Outsourcing of all functions, including some core engineering development, is becoming more prevalent, even where quality of outsourced work is substantially lower, while being very expensive. Technical experts are randomly appointed, often with very little or no experience in the area of expertise, while the actual experts are equally randomly misplaced in roles that require completely different skills and experiences.

Human resource department provides only hiring and firing services, and provide virtually no value to employees. Career path and employee development is routinely reserved only for the few preselected employees, and it is not part of the company culture and operating principles. Work/life balance is severely impacted by high internal turnover, frequent rework caused by poor decisions, and highly stressful work environment. Individuality and creativity are being increasingly supressed by implementation of standardized processes and methodologies, regardless of how flawed and inefficient these processes actually are.

While most agree that a major re-organization of HD Engineering was overdue, it was planned very poorly, and executed even worse. Consequently, the new organization is very unstable and likely unsustainable.

As a result of years of poor engineering leadership, Harley-Davidson has become a terrible place for engineers who want to perform at the highest levels. Instead, it has become an environment that fosters mediocrity and obedience at the expense of passion and ingenuity.

Advice to Senior Management

If people are not treated well, they will not perform well. Leadership must restore trust and confidence of people in order to get the most out of them, resulting in greatest value for all stakeholders. The only way a company will have a committed workforce is by having leadership committed to employees, just the same as all HD employees are committed to their customers. It is this commitment and passion, and not fear, that will make HD a world class motorcycle company it wants to become.

Without complete trust in leadership and leadership fully committed to its people, HD is at a risk of becoming a world class 2-wheeled appliance company instead.

Pros

The products are as fun to work with as anything out there, especially if you ride. There is a variety of challenging work that keeps the job fresh.

Cons

The job company is in the midst of a multi-year organizational reorganization which has kept employees in limbo for an extended period.

Advice to Senior Management

Be straight up with your employees. They want to be part of the team that keeps the company competitive. The current adversarial relationship is counter productive.

Pros

Best Benefits
Great brand(Harley Davidson motorcycles) emphasis.
Great co-workers and management

Cons

Compensation, compensation...........!!!!
Customers( riders)can be very rude, and hard to deal with.

Advice to Senior Management

Salary surveys among peer groups to keep more in tune with competitive salaries in the marketplace.

Pros

- the Harley-Davidson culture is fun and exciting
- clients (dealers) are, for the most part, pleasant to deal with
- company has a good reputation
- excellent brand image
- employees are hard-working, easy to get along with
- a sense of doing positive things and actually making a difference to your client's business

Cons

- the sales manager is completely incompetent, resulting in wasted talent in the sales and training departments
- employees are incredibly undercompensated for their level of knowledge and dedication
- there is a general lack of higher level education that permeates, from employee to management; practically every manager had to return to school to receive their college degrees after corporate mandated it
- the senior management team is generally like the blind leading the blind
- contractors are not treated well, and undervalued
- not enough integration with the parent company, although this is a goal and there has been marked improvement recently

Advice to Senior Management

- Allow more feedback from the employees or contractors that have the most exposure to client needs, to better determine processes and goals for the future
- Require MBAs or some level of business management education at the senior management level
- Hire an intelligent business development manager instead of a constant stream of BS artists -- this will make a world of difference in growth and profits
- Hire more employees/contractors that have lived outside of Ohio, to broaden minds and experiences
- Create a more defined employee or contractor advancement program that is more integrated with the one at corporate

Pros

Great Product and people to work with.
Opportunities to interact with customers (although this seems to be in decline).
Customers appreciate the product and this makes you feel proud to have worked on it.

Cons

Into third year of lay-offs (they call it a "business transformation").
Continued out-sourcing of business - technical and manufacturing.
High level of mistrust in senior leadership created by poor leadership, and continues to get worse.
People were once the key competitive advantage, not so anymore.

Advice to Senior Management

Remember what made this company great, not what you think you know what is the right thing to do. The key to gaining competitive advantage will be the ability of leaders to create an adaptive learning environment that encourages the development of intellectual capital. The only sustainable competitive advantage is your people... Invest in them.

Pros

Close to the bikes
Relaxed dress code, and comp time policy (in my dept)
Some good managers
Decent benefits - good vacation policy

Cons

Another round of layoffs, after a great 2nd quarter - Why???
Demotions, including pay decrease, to many employees who were excellent performers
It seems employees are now interchangable, or worse, disposable
Major decisions are not made with input from key stakeholders (those of us who must deal with the consequences)
Benefits are dropping

Advice to Senior Management

At least act like the employees and their skillsets are important.