Syngenta Seeds Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

Pros

This company is a modern employer that recognizes employees needs for job empowerment, security and consistency. Benefits are as good as they can get...

Cons

... salary levels including the Stock Purchase Program however could do better. Carreer paths are not as clerarly defined as they should for a company of that stature.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up with the good work and keep your social concience as demonstrated today. Do not fall into the trap of greed and short term gain, while jeopardizing long term goals and prosperity.

Pros

Promotes rotation within the company, great investment in employees careers via technical and leadership classses

Cons

politically charged, no information sharing, disconnected, hard to determine who does what due to constant changes, poor communication of how we are getting from A to C, long hours with limited praise, third party vendor does not take responsibility for quality of work, no plan to bring third party up to expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

work more closely with lower level managers to develope plans to work through issues, communicate expectations clearly.

Pros

For those in a particular discipline, you get the option of working from home quite a bit, which is nice. The campus was located close to my home so commute was easy. Learned a lot about plants and genetics.

Cons

You will literally work yourself to death, yet management rarely acknowledges this fact or thnks you for your hard work.
There is little communication from senior management to the "worker bees", and where there is, it is convoluted and unclear.
Since they are a global company, you're expected to be at anyone's beck and call 24/7.
Management constantly changes their mind about things but never communicates those changes to those responsible for making those said changes until it's too late.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees with mor respect and that might help with your turnover problem.

Pros

If you like business transformation, you will like Syngenta

Cons

If you do not like change, and if your comfort zone is small, you will not like working for Syngenta

Advice to Senior Management

Not enough credit is given to those that keep the "wheels on the bus" while the business transformation that is taking place.

Pros

It is a growing company in a dynamic industry. Recent merger of seeds companies and restructuring makes for a lot of opportunity . International company with employee from all over the world at the corporate office. Will provide resources for training and development. Strong global senior management.

Cons

Corporate strategy isn't communicated effectively to staff. Lots of work required, without a lot of recognition. Often staff would work long hours. Recent merger of seed companies makes for a dynamic working environment, but leads to disorganization. Restructuring has creating some stress among staff and this has impacted the moral of the organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Better communication of strategy to staff and better operational organization of internal departments with clearly delineated responsibilities would benefit the organization.

Pros

I like Work-life balance. I also like Syngenta ESPP because company matches 50% of your annual contribution. With Syngenta stock price going up in past 2-3 years, this has returned good money. Other benefits like pension plan and 401K are also above average. Pension plans are unheard of nowadays. Also company matches certain % to employee contribution.

Cons

There are not enough opportunities for promotion. Several employees have been in same position for several years. Much recognition isnt given to educational qualifications. The base salary is lower than industry average (although compensated by other benefits like ESPP, pension, 401K). The company is making progress in communication, but still lags behind industry leaders.

Advice to Senior Management

identify talented employees and make efforts to retain them, provide more opportunities to employees for promotion, bring base salary to industry average while keeping other benefits at their current levels. Keep up the good work with work-life balance.

Pros

there is a potential for growth if senior management every listens to its employees.

Cons

the lack of respect the the senior management has for it employees. the last reorganization they did their best to kill the loyality that they had in the three brand that they marketed their products for.

Advice to Senior Management

listen to your employees and understand the hard work that they do. do not let managers get rid of people because they do not agree with everything that is said. constructive differences can help a company, and there is no one that know what is going on with the company better than the workers closest to the action. they are at the heart beat of the company and they want the company to survive regardless what senior managers think. a senior manager can always move to a different company the average employee is stuck with the decisions that are made.