IHS Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

The benefits are great. World class organization. The people are friendly and easy to work with. Good work life balance.

Cons

Career advancement is hard within your department, but their is opportunity within the company. Being such a fast paced company is hard to prioritize responsibilities.

Pros

Good paid-time-off. OK benefits overall. Company is stable/growing, albeit mostly through acquisition

Cons

No communication between teams or with leadership. Management doesn't solicit feedback or appear to care about is happening at the working level. No sense of corporate identity or culture.

Advice to Senior Management

Break down the walls. Communicate and listen. Work on building a real corporate culture.

Pros

They do have an excellent health/vision/dental package, although it was difficult to get time off approved for doctor's appointments.

Cons

Immediate manager was micro-manager, and top management had no idea of how to use technology to make the job more productive. We were using a CRM system circa 1995.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend some actual time with people that do the jobs there before you make sweeping, nonsensical technology decisions.

Pros

Super smart programmers with tons of experience. Lots of really good, under appreciated people that are overworked. They have to be bandaid artists to keep all of the old systems going.

Cons

Management is totally clueless, and they are making technical decisions they are not qualified to be making. They believe that they don't need software engineers. There is no trust. People at IHS don't take big chances because they are concerned about protecting the pension they've been working on for 30 or more years and their paycheck. IHS never trains their people. People have a job, not a career, at IHS. Ancient critical systems - 15 - 20 years old

Advice to Senior Management

Unload about 1/2 of management. I was most effective during the holidays when they were all taking time off. If you do a count of the directors and VP's, in the phone directory, it runs into huge numbers. Unload the employees that are just there for the paycheck and the pension.

Pros

Decent pension and health benefits.
Company perenially makes huge profits, so is not affected by downturn in the economy, but employees are not rewarded accordingly.

Cons

All but a few jobs in the headquarters have been outsourced or moved to less expensive countries.
Middle to upper management turnover every 2 or 3 years, so there no people at theses levels who are actually engaged or interested in the company's success.
Every year the company terminates large numbers of older workers and replaces them with entry level people, short term contractors, and outsourced jobs.

Advice to Senior Management

Take notice of dedicated employees, and occassionally reward them.
Treat professionals as such, instead of like menial labor.

Pros

Nice people, good location in SE Metro Denver

Cons

Very unclear what those of us in the trenches where supposed to be doing. Plenty of menial work like collating huge reports that no one could possible read.

Advice to Senior Management

Give even a little support to employees seeking to improve processes.

Pros

Clear vision and strategy for future growth, strong and caring management team, highly competence colleague base, "smart and nice," culture, high performance culture, good values and commitment to employee development, excellent opportunities for colleagues who prove themselves to grow and be recognized

Cons

Many priorities, given IHS is one of the few companies still investing and growing in this economy

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to focus on long term growth for the company, prioritize among the many opportunities

Pros

IHS has a unique value proposition in our market place. The combination of data products across four domains offers clients one-stop shopping that can't be found elsewhere.

Cons

Just as at most corporations, the decision making process can be slow.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work!

Pros

Energy industry, established company, currently carry no debt.

Cons

Slow moving organization, room for advancement is slim due to tenured employees. Management makes promises it does not keep.

Advice to Senior Management

Develop career development plan and reward high performing employees based on sound metrics.