Unisys Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

The mix of proprietary and commodity software and hardware technologies results in some very interesting projects. Organizational managers are supportive of their organizations.

Cons

Low staff turnover has resulted in a stale environment in some respects - the vast majority of the Malvern management and engineering staff have been in the Malvern facility for fifteen - twenty years.

Advice to Senior Management

To improve employee satisfaction and spread good practices and ideas across the company, develop explicit employee development programs or similar initiatives to rotate employee work assignments in the company. The virtual workplace trend should support this.

Pros

Company has strong position with clients. Teams care about clients. Teams are good at reacting to needs. Professional teams at Director levels and below.

Cons

BU/s continue to be internally focused. Some business unit leaders rarely even speak to clients other than the ones they already know like Banks they use to work for. BU leader tend to insulate themselves from bold people / activities until they are proven,,, then take credit. For those that are bold in middle management, they don't last long, too threatening to leadership.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to grow, take a hard look at the EC qualifications. At least a few of them have a track record of losing ground even during booming economies. These are the people leading your business units.

Pros

Favoritism is rewarded, performance reviews are on time but have little to do with rewards (there were none for 5 years)
Internal education is available at a HS level

Cons

Continual lay-offs/"right-sizing" to India.
Incompetence is fine based on seniority and if you grew up in the 'field"
Educcation is not valued
The culture dictates being scared of the boss

Advice to Senior Management

Fire/"right size" the ancient Field Engineers who some how (Peter Principle) have risen to Director level jobs that require grey matter skill sets of which they only know hand level skills from fixing machines in the 1970's

Pros

* Challenging client projects
* Many career growth opportunities
* Great people to work with
* Respectible salaries and benefits
* Process and systems oriented company
* Worldwide company

Cons

* Goals and review process can be convoluted and capricious
* Some positions can require extensive travel on personal time
* Company initiatives can change too often

Advice to Senior Management

It can be difficult to properly guide a company so large, but that's what you get paid for. Establish the company direction and policies and stick with them for a while.

Pros

You get to work with some very smart, very experienced people. The CEO, Ed Coleman seems to very much care where the company is headed and is a very easy person to talk to. I would say many people have their business "heart" in the right place. On a personal level salary and benefits are good, but perhaps not great. in this day and age a decent salary is tough to come by, so my appreciation to this company for that.

Cons

This company has shrunk so much in the last 10 years that it has become impossible to get anything done with any level of quality or pride. We are basically set up to fail. I get the same comment from my colleagues in many areas so it isn't just me. You are on your own which, sometimes can be a good thing, but in this case isn't.
This company continues to think and act as if we were one of the "big guys", but those days are over.
Work / life is completely out of balance... you get decent vacation time, but you can never take it.
Don't expect to coast in this company (not really a con)... life is more of a frenzied scrambling and hanging on for dear life.

Advice to Senior Management

It is time to stop trying to compete head on with the big boys on every front and instead carve out a few select niches where we can effectively compete. You are setting us up to fail. take the smart people you have, create teams that actually have enough people to be effective and focus them on where we really want to be successful.

Pros

Work-life flexibility, global experience, fast-paced environment, intelligent and highly skilled workforce

Cons

Having to work in the suburbs, no great public transportation

Pros

Co-workers were great. Management allowed flexibility to pursue your interests. Great balance between work and home life. At it's peak a great place to work.

Cons

Over the years, upper management has changed the direction of the company so many times that its own customers do't know what they do. Total compensation has dropped dramatically over the last 5 years.

Advice to Senior Management

Pick a direction for the company and stick with it. Cutting benefits for regular employees and keeping excessive pay for upper management is not right.

Pros

With so many projects going on internally, and management changing "strategies" every 6 months, you are also busy ( mainly reinventing the wheel)

Cons

No equal pay for women doing the same or more work as males
Old Boys Network- Golf and cigars
Males receive the "fringe benefits"- virtual, phone, travel- the females do not

Advice to Senior Management

Equal pay for WOMEN, clean out the dead weight of the OBC-

Pros

Many bright spots of creative development and use of technology combined with dedicated, talented people.

Cons

Years of rolling layoffs has negative impact on those who are left making them less productive.

Advice to Senior Management

Make program owners accountable for positive results or find a replacements for them.

Pros

Smart People, Great Technology, Interesting Projects, Peers and subordinates tend to be pleasant and easy to get along with, when they are not too scared to make a significant decision.

Cons

Management tends to lead through fear, intimidation, information hoarding, and duplicity. Can't count the number of meetings I attended where senior leaders made decisions based on the notion that employees were "too scared of the economy to care about abusive policies."

Advice to Senior Management

Clear the decks and bring in some new blood. Most senior managers with whom I worked had a tenure of more than 15-20 years and had no current skills. For a company trying to lead in the world of consulting, you could stand to care a little more about the people who are, in effect, your product.