Mercury Marine Reviews

Pros

Flexible work environment. Understand personal needs. Training opportunities are good. Mercury Marine sees the benefits of innovation and staying ahead of the competition.

Cons

Some management can be too hands on. Some employees aren't as accountable as they should be. Lots of projects going on at the same time can be hard to keep a handle on it all.

Advice to Senior Management

Very good strategic direction. Keep the interest in the employees. Communication efforts are going well. Management through the downturn has been excellent.

Pros

Discounts on many of the corporation's products.

Cons

Struggling industry, work overload from many departments.
Company is lost in Excel.

Pros

At one time good wage and benefits,but in recent years things have become to rigid and fewer opportunities exist for inventive people.

Cons

Any dissent is dealt with harshly,directors and managers all seem to be only concerned with improving their position,to often common sense and good judgement are overlooked in favor of lame ideas and practices.

Advice to Senior Management

There is an immediate need to repair damage done during recent reshuffling of plant floor personnel and direction.Locally the available labor pool has dried up of any truly promising individuals.Not easy to retain people on paltry wage and no future benefits,company no longer innovator it wants world to believe it is.

Pros

Good atmosphere. A lot of good people to work with (and an occasional bad one of course) but by an large I enjoyed working there.

Cons

Little bit too political and who knows who on the management side. As far as how I was treated by all my managers personally, I was satisfied, but there seems to be a lot of odd things that happen in the levels above the middle management.

Advice to Senior Management

Honestly, need less layers of them there I think.

Pros

Great products and enough stones to push the envelope in the industry. Worldwide product and appeal. Long history and pride in it's history.

Cons

Long long hours. Union difficult to deal with but mostly misled and misunderstood. Management unwilling to make some investments on necessity but willing to make careless investment on new products that never met volume expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to be direct and continue to lead through the current market low.

Pros

Interesting products, good people.
They have (had?) a company-wide process improvement program in place. If you could demonstrate that an idea could provide real savings for the company, then you had a genuine chance at procuring resources for the idea and, with success, a genuine chance at promotion.

Cons

Stillwater plant has now been closed.
Benefits and compensation are not very competitive.
High turnover rate in senior management.
Information was typically articulated most clearly through the rumor mill.

Sorry to descend to the level of the anecdote, but without them I'm afraid my criticisms might simply ring hollow:

I worked at Mercury during the period leading up to the 2008 recession, when gas prices had doubled in under six months to nearly $5/g in Stillwater, and when the imminent collapse of the real estate market was obvious. The market for luxury goods, like those produced by Mercury at Stillwater, was already nearly nonexistent. The only plan articulated by management was an expectation that things would eventually get better. They literally had no plan for dealing with lean times in a market that they understood to be highly cyclical.

One morning we were called to a meeting in which it was explained that the company was looking at ways to cut costs, with no mention of specifics. On returning to our desks, we found an email stating that the company had canceled its contract with its coffee supplier. While I respect that some money was saved, the experience was absurd, and typical of management's habit of presenting an optimistic rather than straightforward version of reality. More importantly, management took no personal pay cuts that I'm aware of, and made no effort to communicate how more substantial cost saving measures were to be effected.

Until one morning when I arrived to find that my entire group had been called into our manager's office. Frightened for our livelihoods, we anxiously listened as the senior mid-manager explained that layoffs/forced retirements were planned for another group. It was sort of the reverse of having the rug pulled out from under you, but with the same emotional effect.

To borrow a coworker's phrase, senior mid-management seemed to develop a "hard on" for this tactic after I left. Given the way the Stillwater plant was closed (Mercury _publicly announced_ that they would close their Fon du Lac plant, then rescinded and closed the Stillwater plant) I now believe that they were just following the example of senior and corporate management.

The saddest part of this review is that, in all honesty, I can only label Mercury as a typical company at worst.

Advice to Senior Management

Make a long-term, company-wide plan (including feasible solutions for risk management) that will survive management turnover. Include some goals. Follow it, and share it with your employees.

Pros

a good company to work for in a nice town.

Cons

boat engine making is avolatile industry. Chances of job losses are higher especially during economic downtuns. The are the first to see the impact of discretionary customer spending and are probably the last to recover completely

Advice to Senior Management

great place to work. can do with more transparency

Pros

Great place to work, people are excellent. Good working evironment. had an enjoyable time in my years there, and was actually a pleasure to go to work every day. Work is demanding, but that just makes the day go by faster. There are downsides, but the benefits outweigh the negatives. Having said that, the only readon i left was that I had too for financial reasons, I had a much higher offer - but still miss the gang...

Cons

the compensation at Mercury Marine could be a little better. It's not terrible, but left because of a much better offer. Vacation time is fair, but it could always be better. There are down sides to just about any job out there, and Merc Marine is no diferent.

Advice to Senior Management

you should pay more. if you want to maintain the top people, it is going to cost a little. If you continue to not pay, the best people will leave for better offers.