Recall Corporation Reviews

Pros

Growth opportunities for middle management employees

Cons

Sense of direction during difficult times

Advice to Senior Management

Improve communication

Pros

Fair wages, excellent PTO policy, 1 for 1 stock purchase plan, very good benefits overall. Benefits are the best thing about Recall, however those benefits are through Brambles. With Brambles putting the company up for sale, future benefits likely won't be nearly as attractive.

Cons

Recall couldn't care less about its employees. Their people are an afterthought and nothing more than numbers on a page. Annual turnover rate of 40% is the primary indicator of that.

People with no management experience are often put into managerial roles. When you combine that with an unfocused HR department that provides no managerial leadership training, you end up with a potpourri of leaders that is unable to communicate consistent messages across the business. Recall has some insufferable micro-managers and other managers who don't even pay attention to their groups. Some departments have to spend 40 hours a week sitting in their cubes, while other departments work from home most of the time and rarely come into the office. All depends on who the manager is. No consistency in any area of that company.

The cronyism is ridiculous. Managers, directors, and vice-presidents who have already failed in one job, are often shuffled into another role to screw that up, as long as they have a buddy on the executive team. Some people have been promoted or given new titles 4-5 times, the majority never advances so people continue leaving the company in droves.

It's a good place to work if you don't have any ambition, have a decent manager, and can work from home. Otherwise, it's pretty brutal.

Pros

Management is often gone (spending company money on themselves, family and friends traveling the world) so there is flexibility in work schedule.
Loyalty and honesty are not requirements of the job.

Cons

Only certain people are advanced.
No human resources standards, guidelines, resources, support.
The big bosses are extremely impressed with themselves and know everything - do NOT question the decisions made by executive management.

Advice to Senior Management

Practice what you preach and act like you: 1.) care for your employees, 2.) value transparency and communication, 3.) want diversity of individuals, thought and experience.

Pros

Recall offers a competitive salary and a good benefits package.

Flexibility around working from home - good work/life balance. As with many workplaces, you're always plugged in, but you don't have to be plugged in at the office if you don't need to be

You will be surrounded by a group of intelligent, hard-working and well meaning coworkers...really good people in middle management on down.

Cons

Those good, intelligent, hard-working, well-meaning people are placed in a professional straight-jacket from which it is impossible to escape.

Senior management at Recall epitomizes the "good 'ol boy" system, and if you're not in the small clique of the president's saddle buddies you can forget about career advancement - other employees might as well be disposable razors.

Absolutely zero opportunities for professional growth. Most positions are never even posted internally because the individual who has been selected to fill the role has been hand-picked long in advance. No formal professional education or leadership development programs.

Completely inept senior management. Recall is an "Ops" company: all of senior management comes from an operations background and that's all they know or understand. That's why top-line growth fails to meet targets EVERY year. In the several years I've been there full bonuses have been paid out only once due to a stroke of luck from a big customer win.

No strategic vision or direction. Senior management wears blinders and is focused on the next quarter only. See other comments regarding this, it's why people can never accomplish anything substantive from a project. The support is never there long enough to see anything through to the end.

Another year, another round of blanket headcount reductions... Wonder if this is the year my number is up? Yeah, that pretty much sums of the morale there.

Advice to Senior Management

Succeed or fail, you have to develop a long-term strategy and go with it. Failure to do so will result only in the slow death spiral in which you find yourselves today.

Senior management ranks will have to open the doors to some extent. You can't just slash internal costs year over year without generating top-line growth. Eventually you will be left with only a husk of a company.

Pros

Some opportunties are available if you're in the correct place at the right time. There are some coworkers that care about their job and the company.

Cons

Money is blown on ridiculous projects and directors are oblivious. When this is pointed out it will most likely be dismissed. Number of coworkers are not used to thier fullest abilities, while others remain to produce sub par results. Constantly reorging and shuffling the same players around in different roles, thus not fixing the root issue.

Advice to Senior Management

Enough with reorging, stop spending money, invest in your employees for training and hold vendors and employees accountable for their actions.

Pros

Good benefits and competent colleagues.

Cons

Dysfunctional leadership with poor knowledge of the business

Advice to Senior Management

Learn the business!

Pros

Benefits are recent, pay is fair, Management keeps employees in the loop

Cons

no upward mobility, micro management

Pros

Flexible schedule. Nice people. Good benefits.

Cons

All I can say is if you are not apart of the "Good 'ole boy network" don't expect to go very far.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire some "real" leaders. Leaders that lead by example, care about people and the business.

Pros

Decent benefits, fairly knowledgeable middle management

Cons

Poor leadership, poor execution, micro-management, no concrete vision, forward thinking but inability to implement, highly intelligent people that are incapable in their roles

Advice to Senior Management

Stop promoting buddies that talk a good talk but are truly incapable and inept. Running employees through and firing them doesn't inspire confidence, it inspires fear. When people talk about a good day consisting of getting through it without making a mistake, there's a problem in the culture. Allow room for small errors; that's one of the only tried and true ways that companies succeed.

Pros

The benefits package was slightly above average. I also thoroughly enjoyed the people that I worked with. There are some good people at Recall.

Cons

There are also some bad people. I witnessed greed and betrayal firsthand (by senior level management). Morale was consistently low. There were 4 CEOs in the time period I was there (less than 5 years). Something is seriously wrong. Nothing is being done to fix it.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. The majority of employees were extremely dissatisfied with the company and its senior management team. Morale was extremely low as I was departing.