Kimberly-Clark Reviews in Neenah, WI

Pros

Decent salary for location.
Decent benefits.
They give you lunches and free product on occasion but not as much as they used to.

Cons

Location sucks unless you like the cold.
Days are too overloaded with meetings. (common to have anywhere from 7-10 a day).
They don't seem to value experienced knowledgeable employees who want to stay at their current position and not trying to make it to the top.

Pros

It used to have quality products and value quality in their employees.
It's easy to snow the current management.

Cons

Management is now comprised of those who could not make it otherwise, so disappointing.

Advice to Senior Management

The doers have left, or are leaving the company. Their talent, while "expensive" is what made the company what it was. If you aren't expanding and producing new, sell off and pay off the retirees.

Pros

-- Good salary but no bonuses
-- Work/Life balance exits - Most people have kids and take off at 5 or so.
-- Very nice team atmosphere
-- Management recognizes people when they do a good job (at least I have seen that in my case)

Cons

-- Too many processess and things take a long time to get done
-- Too many meetings and most of them are not productive. We have guidlines in the meeting room that say "dont email during meetings" but no one adheres to is because we have meetings all the time and we have NO time to actually work or respond to emails.
-- Dont have international career opportunities in marketing as much as we'd like.
-- Location is not the best (neenah is 2.5 hours north from Milwaukee) -- not much to do

Advice to Senior Management

-- Invest in better proceses that talk to one another instead of in silos.

Pros

Great people to work with. The work culture of K-C is very good, relaxed, people treat each other with respect. There is good chance for growth. Mid west has the best people

Cons

I worked at Neenah, it has less exposure to outside opportunities. Still the culture is very conservative. People can work a little more. The management strategic plan did not work well for outsourcing.

Advice to Senior Management

The strategic plan for outsourcing has to be reconsidered. Management should train employees more and try to see how to work with Matrix organization.

Pros

The pay is good. The managers are all friendly and easy to work with. The company provide challenging tasks for employees.

Cons

Moved alot by the manager, hard to stay in one city. The work sometimes are overwhelming. No pay over 40 hours a week

Advice to Senior Management

Station the employees in one location if the employee is happy with that location. That way, it prevent employees getting demotivated

Pros

salary is definitely appropriate for the position that you are hired at. You are not micro managed. Allowed to take the bull by the horns and work on large projects in which you are seen quite highly in the industry.

Cons

In recent years the annual salary increases have significantly decreased due to budget constraints. Seems to be once you reach a certain level within the company you are stuck there. Often hire "director" level and about from outside the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Should be looking within the company for talent that can be promoted before going to the outside and hiring. There are plenty of talented people that could move up the ranks and do a successful job in upper management.

Pros

Decent benefits package; good place to learn maketing process and consumer insights.

Cons

Marketers treat marketing as a rational, functional and commercial exercise; attend to consumers rational/functional needs well, miss on the emotional needs. No bonus for anyone below Director level. Remote location. Poor management; lack of real leaders.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership doesn't exist. Upper management are not good managers of people or programs.

Pros

Very good salary and benefits. Fair treatment of employees. Excellent working conditions. Access to world-class exercise facility. Ability to fairly manage work/non-work life.

Cons

No obvious cons with working at K-C. With the flattening of the organization in the last few years opportunities to reach higher levels in management were reduced.

Advice to Senior Management

Scale back on the repetitive and redundant performance management program. After the first two years of implementation it became rote and routine.

Pros

KC used to be a super place to work and I am grateful for the career I had. Former Senior Management preached that people were their most valuable asset, and their actions were consistent with that philosophy.

Cons

Things slowly started to change when a new Senior Management team was put in place. Here are some (but not all) of the issues:

Hypocritical management..."we need to cut cost and save every penny we can as margins are declining. But first let me take my profitability bonus of 12M."
Absolutely unfair employee rating system that encourages politicking to get a good rating.
Upper management is completely unaware of how incapable some of the lower management in the field are.
Management can't stick with a plan for the long term...they tend to panic when the smallest part of the plan goes awry, and reverse the direction. Then, when the next thing goes wrong, they'll go back two steps to the original plan.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your people better and let them be themselves, get rid of the current evaluation process.

Pros

Kimbery-Clark will proved a great opportunity to gain experience for future jobs. A Financial Analyst is heavily involved in reporting and small analysis.

Cons

Many of the required financial activities are at the end of month and beging of month. No vacation can usually be taken during these times.

Advice to Senior Management

Top performers are not compensated fairly. A top performer should get a much larger increase. When looking at the percentage delta between the two groups there is not much of a difference.