Kentucky Blood Center Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Kentucky Blood Center

Pros – You get benefits but the job is mind numbing. Just sit on the phone all morning and afternoon making phone calls to donors getting the same response again and again.

Cons – It is boring and not challenging. Sometimes I think the clock starts to go backwords. You get no real chance of getting a raise. Something like 5% every other year.

Former Employee – worked at Kentucky Blood Center full-time for more than a year

Pros – It's for a good cause. Most of the non-management people are very amiable and easy to get along with.

Cons – Management are set in their ways, not receptive to new ideas or methods. Very easy to quickly fall out of favor with managers, especially in the technical services area. Employees can be terminated for very trivial reasons, usually for some very vague form of misconduct, so KBC won't have to pay unemployment. If you make a mistake, you will hear about it from QA/QC and your manager over and over again. Unbeknownst to the public, a lot of blood products, namely plasma, are sold to for-profit entities (used for research, cosmetics, etc) for great financial gain to KBC.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop treating employees like preschoolers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Kentucky Blood Center

Pros – It is a full time job with benefits. The retirement program is comparable to other companies and parking is close.

Cons – Employees are treated like children. Managers are patronizing and paternalistic. KBC plays the big "Blame-Game" with the fault always settling down the line onto the lower employees. Nothing is ever a manager or director's fault.
Every stray mark or tiny clerical error is a huge deal and shows up on the employee's performance evaluation.
My manager marched into our lab once time and announced, "There has been too much talking and too many mistakes in here lately, so we're going to have a 'Day of Silence'!"
Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, free adults right here in America were forbidden to speak on the job for an entire day or else risk being suspended or fired.
Now this same manager is spearheading the new Health and Wellness program that is supposed to benefit employees and follow what the employees want. Instead it is just another way for management to control us.
We are on camera every moment, even in the breakroom and off the clock, and going into the restroom. We never know when the drug testing crew will be brought in to hustle us from our work areas like criminals under arrest. We're herded into the hallway and forced to sit under their watchful eye and the cameras, searched, then forced to urinate with a monitor/collector standing right there at the stall door that has big gaps at the sides. Employees not being tested have to stay away from the restroom. Have to go really bad or on your period? Too bad..you must go all the way to the other hallway on the ground floor.

There is blatent favoritism. One employee was suspended for being 15 minutes late twice in 6 months. Another employee in the same shipping dept. called in over 30 times in one year and nothing happened except she was promoted to a Senior Rep.

Beware of this place. The average length of employment is a mere 2 years. You will be railroaded or fired for no reason. We all never know whether or not our badges will let us in the door or whether HR reps will be waiting to fire us when we arrive.
Everyone on evening shift freaks out if a director or HR rep pulls in the parking lot and a worried announcement is yelled over the intercom.. "HR/Director is on the premises!"
Then everyone waits to hear who took the "Walk of Shame".

Advice to Senior Management – Respect your employees more. We have carried you through dozens of inspections and garnered award after award. Compared to other blood centers, you are blessed with quality employees who work very hard. After every FDA inspection, new licensing application approval, new testing equipment implementation, and major system change you always clap your hands and say "Thanks so much!". But then 2 days later you are glowering, firing, and hating again.

You are earning millions with the new product licensing that allows you to sell more products in more places than ever and from now testing 3 more tests in-house instead of sending them off to another lab and paying through the nose.... so how is it that you constantly nitpick and complain?

Employees are aware that the directors have given themselves generous bonuses, while crying poor to hourly employees, half of whom live under the poverty line, and refusing to give raises over 2.8%.

It's becoming clearer to employees that our only option is to join a union.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend