Shell Oil US Reviews

Pros

Good training opportunities
Leadership opportunities
High level of responsibility
Good work environment
Work-life balance

Cons

Salary isn't in top quartile
Bureaucracy
Relatively flat organization
Lots of red-tape

Advice to Senior Management

Cut out un-necessary processes to improve efficiency

Pros

Good work experience is ensured
Career development is guaranteed
Good income is guaranteed
Freedom of expression is welcome
Diversity is welcom

Cons

Work experience to be imoroved
Career development is guaranteed
Good income is guaranteed
Freedom of expression is welcome
Diversity is welcom

Advice to Senior Management

Work experience to be imoroved
Career development is guaranteed
Good income is guaranteed
Freedom of expression is welcome
Diversity is welcom

Pros

friendly people
9/80 schedule
great benefits
competitive pay

Cons

lay offs lately are scarry

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more and lay off less

Pros

Flexible work schedule is good. Benefits are relatively good. These are the best reasons to work at Shell

Cons

Poor management. Poor employee training and career development. Low level of trust throughout the entire organization. A society of endless meetings. Consensus based decision making. Control/accountability ratio approaching zero for many employees. Low employee proficiency level for work processes.

Advice to Senior Management

Eliminate the nonsense. Reign in the rate of change and allow employees to become proficient in current work processes before rolling out new initiatives.

Pros

Great benefits and ok salary

Cons

Things take too long to get done

Pros

If you come in as a "high potential" and are very young, you are golden in this company. Once you have this label you can essentially do no wrong -- even if you perform poorly, it is perceived that you have just been put in a job that does not match your strengths. Also, if you want to come here and just be an OK performer and never be promoted, this is a good place to be. You can park here and be forgotten for 10 years without anyone noticing.

Cons

If you are not a designated "high potential", and there are many reasons that this can happen that have nothing to do with your actual real life potential or performance, then it can be very challenging to be promoted or even move laterally into positions that are seen as glamorous. Even if you perform very well, your raise and bonus will never compete with a high potential who does poorly. If this sort of thing gets under your skin, then do not come to Shell, because it is rampant -- there is a 2% ruling class that gets everything and if you are not in that club very shortly upon joining (again, many reasons this can go the wrong way -- for example if you have the wrong manager who runs the evaluation process the wrong way) then it will never change.

Advice to Senior Management

Get consistent about evaluating employees' potential or do not do it in a systematic way at all. Get better at communicating the reasons for change -- that doesn't mean more polished presentations and speeches, it means getting real with people about business needs and leaders taking the initiative to talk to people face to face one on one in their daily work lives.

Pros

Diversity is seen as important. Possibility to work in many locations. Understand work-life balance. Good business principles that are really seen as important.

Cons

Not always transparent why certain decisions are being taken. Some senior managers not as competent as they should be. Bureaucratic to the extent of looking disorganized.

Advice to Senior Management

Get more engaged with staff.

Pros

Great training available, great collaboration tools to use. If you are open and good at networking, you will have lots of good opportunities

Cons

As with any company, Shell will hold on to jobs that support its core competencies during lean times, so if you are not in that type of skill set, you will be challenged staying, even if you had good reviews.

Advice to Senior Management

There are lots of people that are disconnected from leadership. Currently, I believe that management was forced to make severe cuts and lots of the remaining employees are feeling a strain as the cuts may have been a little too deep. I would really pay attention to the way the pendulum has sung from promoting Work/Life Balance to something that people are now very challenged with working less that 50 to 60 hours in a week.

Pros

compensation is good
benefits are on par with comparable companies

Cons

Management tends to change often
Seems that managers are brought from different parts of the company who are unfamiliar with our business

Advice to Senior Management

Listen more to folks on the front lines

Pros

Interesting work

Low stress level

Decent work life balance

Good support for professional development activities

Generally decent folks to work with

Cons

Way too bureaucratic

Too much focus on form (Do your Power Points look a certain way?) over substance (How
competent you are, What level of enthusiasm do you bring to your work, Do you possess a more compass, etc)

Lots of discussion around career support and development, but did not translate well in day-to-day practice

Advice to Senior Management

Apply higher standards to individuals when making promotion decisions - Focus more on competence and high moral character than an individual's connections

Strengthen the employee benefits packages - not competitive, especially with other large energy companies