Tate & Lyle Ingredients Reviews

Pros

salary above the national average
compliance with legal norms
Social Policy
Finally but most important safety place

Cons

Heads of departments with low competence and education for the atypical position

Advice to Senior Management

nobody would have heard this

Pros

The company is moving to the Chicago area. The company allows you to take time off when necessary.

Cons

It's a London-based company and they run the company very differently from Americans. Their communication to employees is horrible and it's not a very structured company. it has a lot of work to do in terms of gaining and maintaining positive employee satisfaction.

Pros

The company allows movement to learn new areas and develop new skills. The hours are set to around 50 hours per week and there is not a lot of nights and weekends. The operators and engineers are great people to work with

Cons

No upward movement in the company, no good clearcut plan to develop engineers into senior engineers. A lot of firefighing on day-to-day operations. Bad organization of projects.

Advice to Senior Management

there needs to be more development for engineers in the path they choose, not just production and management, but projects and process improvements.

Pros

Tate & Lyle Ingredients Americas is a great place to work if wish to get ahead by playing golf, because it appears that is how the management network is set up.

The work isn't hard. People in the finance department are generally nice. Most are just as frustrated with upper management as I am.

Cons

Work life balance is terrible. Good luck getting time off for family emergencies. Management has come out and stated that employee morale is not a priority. The company is a in a volatile state. Not sure if shared services such as finance will stay in Decatur or whether it will be moved to Chicago in future. There is a wide gap between how British employees and American employees are treated. It is almost like TLIA is a colony. The cafeteria stinks in Decatur, while the cafeteria in Sugar Quay (London) is amazing. The parent company receives five weeks of vacation. US receives two weeks which is somewhat standard.

Advice to Senior Management

If Tate & Lyle wants better employees, they have to improve morale. There are a lot of older workers. If they want to bring in better talent, they will have to do a better job to sell the company as a place people want to work. Currently, students at local universities have a poor opinion of the company.

Pros

I had full support to pursue an opportunity for professional growth when I found one. Management was understanding and flexible when personal time was needed. Experience was unique and useful in that I was given vital project work that was unusually advanced for my experience and education level.

Cons

Recognition for a job well done is almost non-existent. Supervisors in my area were micromanagers. Communication among business units is poor. Information needed for my project work was locked down in security measures to the point that I often "reinvented the wheel" on projects.

Advice to Senior Management

Communication has to be improved. Supervisors need to back off and show some trust towards employees that they are capable of doing their jobs. Recognize people when they complete a project and share the glory for accomplishments.

Pros

Money and money alone. Otherwise, it's not worth the hassle.

Cons

Heavy micromanagement. The plant is really run by the operations manager; the other managers just cowtow to him. Awful working conditions. The tendency to just pay lip service to the environmental and safety concerns gets rather concerning. Furthermore, they are more possessed with the trophy or the award that the safety record brings as opposed to the true benefit.
Awful working hours: really if you do not devote your entire life to the company you are just not giving enough. Nights, weekends. 16 hour days are not uncommon and frequently. If, by chance, you happen to get thrown on shift, you can never do anything that requires a set schedule simply due to the insane rotation they put you on.

Advice to Senior Management

Back off. Let people do their own job. Offer constructive criticism instead of just bullying. Money does not solve all problems. Make people want to be there as opposed to feel trapped.