Shell Oil US Reviews in Houston, TX Area

Pros

Good Benefits, great compensation, and good people

Cons

Slow decision making abilities and group think

Pros

Shell has the resources and a solid business plan for future growth and sustained strong performance. They support a diverse and inclusive team oriented. Shell values its corporate citizenship and is very socially oriented.

Cons

As with most large organizations, it takes significant effort to win support for and then to cascade change within the organization.

Pros

shell is more professional and they have safe environment to work

Cons

It is a large company so they are very slow in decision making

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

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

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

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

Pros

Generous pay and benefits, bonus, 401k, pension, good people to work with, value culture difference, flexible work schedules, some departments allow work at home

Cons

Constant re-organization, outsourcing jobs, the structure of 4-year job assignment slowing down the career movement, lack of opportunities to move up in career ladder

Advice to Senior Management

People survey should have plenty of voices for the advice to management

Pros

The pay and benefits are excellent. Good opportunity for growth but you have to be a go getter, meaning you must have a good work track record, sell yourself and use your people network skills. Under the right manager you can excel with no limits provided there are still jobs available in the U.S., or you are prepared to move about globally to achieve advancement.

Cons

Work life balance is preached but sometimes not adhered to by management. Many jobs require long hours, more than 40 per week and in some positions working till we hours of the morning of next day, with no extra compensation for salaried exempt employees, not even time off. They take advantage of salaried exempt. Manager not always honest and forth coming with changes that affect your job. Lots of politics and playing favorites by managers in many areas of the company. If a manager doesn't like you (and it usually has nothing to do with performance) your opportunity for growth and advancement can be seriously hindered. Big issue currently, lots of job lay-offs and downsizing. Since Shell U.S. has been taken over by Shell Netherlands, the Europeans have been set on a mission to squash all opportunities here in the U.S. and have been moving multitudes of operations and jobs to other global facilities, jobs that do not create efficiencies in processes or in cutting costs. Many new employees just hired found themselves looking for a new job/position withing 6 months of being hired due to job downsizing in the U.S.

Advice to Senior Management

Make job opportunities legit and more available in the United States. Stop disassembling well functioning business areas. Stop the politics and favorites that managers play. Get rid of managers that continue this behavior. When employees bring this to your attention or to HR, listen to them because the case they present is legitimate and if you think about it, it took them months and a lot of advice from others to gain courage to present their situation to management or HR. Shell was once a great company and know as the best place to work, everyone wanted to work for Shell, but now that is no longer the case. Employees are contantly stressed with fear of loosing their job. Bottom line, grow Shell back into the great company it once was. Give employees a great place to work once again and one to be proud of once again. Stop sending jobs overseas and destroying Shell in the U.S.

Pros

Shell offers excellent opportunities for growth early in your career, supports employees in moving to different roles to develop skills and can offer some international opportunities for those interested. Shell is serious about training and development, and there are numerous internal networking opportunities.

Cons

For those more senior in their career, and ambitious to take on more responsibility, Shell will be frustrating as non-quantiative factors weigh in much more heavily into promotion decisions than talent, ability to succeed, proven skills, etc.