Johnson Controls Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

Very stable company that consistently grows, good coworkers (for the most part).

Cons

Compensation is about average, and it's still up tight corporate life.

Advice to Senior Management

Model the company after some of the newer "DotCom" companies.

Pros

- Very supporting people , always ready to help.
- You are given responsibility, not some shitty intern projects.
- Very Diverse, professionally and ethnically.

Cons

- Salary not competetive as other fortune 100 or rather 500 companies like Cummins, Shlumberger
-They should place people at right job as per skills where they can perform better.
- No talk about full time job offer, emails were not replied back.
- Not many young people in the company, but its means more opportunities for someone who joins now for full time.

Advice to Senior Management

Really need to prepare future leadership, bring in more talented young faces and mentor them about business and future roles. Listen to your employees where they want to work and help them shape their career.

Pros

Working at Johnson Controls was great. My past job experience was perfectly suited for what I was doing and I was given freedom to grow.

Cons

The priorities of management would shift constantly. One day you would be working on meeting a certain deadline, then the next day you were told to a different deadline.

Advice to Senior Management

Again, management just needs to stick to their priorities. But overall, Johnson Controls is treating their employees fairly and giving them freedom to grow.

Pros

Great people to work with in a well-managed company. Organizational commitment to product and financial success.

Cons

Succession planning and promotions seem to be based as much on sponsorship or being "in the club" as on an objective search and evaluation of candidates.

Can be challenging to manage the relationship with both customers and suppliers.

Advice to Senior Management

NA

Pros

Fair compensation but not top level

Cons

Cultural and diversity issues drive business decisions. Assurances from management not always honored. For a company that very publicly displays its diversity and ethics it lacks corporate integrity when decisions are made when compared to their public image.

Advice to Senior Management

Honor your agreements. If allowing lower level senior and mid-level managers to make decisions then the executive officers should have the integrity to follow and abide by these decisions. Be careful that your diversity culture does not end up running the company. If asked, I can honestly say that I would not recommend to a friend that a job with JCI would be a good career move. This is hard for me to say because I had a strong belief that JCI was a company worth staying at. A company that was worth the investment. I was wrong in that assessment.

Pros

You learn a lot about the industry. As a large supplier you really learn how to work with suppliers and customers. You learn about lean manufacturing and what it takes to make a profit in a difficult industry. The people are great. They are smart, strong and dedicated. They have a strong team environment. Teams are comprised from a cross functional background. This gives you the opportunity to work with many different disciplines.

Cons

The politics. As with many big organizations your promotion is unfortunately linked to who you know, not what you know. The strong players are kept at their current positions to carry the weight of the workload.
A second downside is JCI is predominantly an automotive supplier and the company takes a hit when the big 3 take a hit.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more respectful of the people. A better system for promotions and same grade job changes needs to be implemented.

Pros

Company values, environment and opportunities make it a good place to work. To this current time JCI has continued to be a company of high values and is now facing the challenges that our competition has been addressing. Recently JCI laid off several hundred people and it was done with respect and in my opinion they get high grades for considering the people and the way they treat them.

Cons

Some people get lost in the number of employees working. I feel the few words listed in my statement sum up a struggle that any large company is facing in todays market place.

Advice to Senior Management

I enjoy working at JCI however some of management is not consistent with the same values as others. Need to work to get on the same page. Upper management needs to refocus and gain consistency.

Pros

Strong financials and excellent senior management. The business is significantly impacted by the overall automotive sector but the company takes aggressive steps to ensure a competitive position in every market condition. Managers are competent and the product development and factories run well to customer expectations.

Cons

Career planning for middle management and those termed "high potential". Despite the label, the process for developing these employees is poor. The overall strategy for human capital throughout JCI is marginal as there is no formal system to move within the organization. Job postings, positions and opportunities are all based on word of mouth and clicks that exist within the organization. Expectations management is also an area where improvements could be made from employees and Business Units.

Advice to Senior Management

Develop an effective employee development plan for top performers.

Pros

JCI is well managed. They are aggressive in controlling costs and quick to pull the plug on unsuccessful programs. Lots of advancement potential within the various divisions. The auto division is very well thought of throughout the industry and is considered a very tough competitor. JCI is a tough negotiator with the OEMs and will readily walk away from unprofitable business.

Cons

The bottom line is extremely important, be aware of potential layoffs even during good times. JCI has lots of alliances with minority suppliers that were great in getting them contracts in the past but will probably be a drag on their growth in the future.

Advice to Senior Management

JCI needs to beef up its interior and seating new product development if it wants to maintain is leadership position.

Pros

At the start (10 years ago) it was a great place to work. I still have a couple of friends from the days where we were real teams, part of the team still exists.
There was a little oppertunity for me.
There are plenty of places to park, and I expect many more by January 2008.
As there is not a set time to start work, there is no harrasment for showing up a couple of minutes later than the norm.

Cons

Very limited opportunities unless you are in a click e.g. U of M Graduate.
Wall Street knows what is going on before the employees
While the morale survey provides a positive message, everyone filled in the correct answers as not to go to all of the improvement meetings.
Only a very few managers provide recognition, most provide criticism (in front of others just to make themselves look good)
Senior Leadership, only looking after the stock-holders and Wall Street. Just look where that put the banking industry
Work life balance (unless you are in a click) is almost non-existant. Manager's will just keep dumping workloads and unrealistic timelines to make themselves look good at meeting.
Fairness & Respect, again if you are not in a click, forget the fairness and respect and expect to do all of the work.
The worst part is when a person leaves JCI it is Orwellian - they become on non-person and it is not correct to remeber they ever were employed at JCI.

Advice to Senior Management

Go to church and not as a hypocrite. So that you can understand that putting others first, than yourself first and self-interest can benefit society. Consider the individual, pushing for the dollar result, when the agreements have been made, places the actions of the employee in the gray area of ethics, to maintain gainful employment.
I can only compare the current management style to the same "self serving" greed the fueled the collapse of the mortgage industry (2008).

After the Re-organization Dec 2008 think more of the Stake-holders and not the Stock-holders, for real employee engagement, then you will have a grass-roots foundation to improve Stock-holder value. Right now you are building a house of cards.