University of Minnesota Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

Pros

Off on holidays and when the University is closed, and offers a decent hourly pay for any position to pay for basics.

Cons

Not enough hours and due to the recession the University has been on a budget freeze for the past 4 years, not allowing any pay increases, which is to be expected.

Pros

You can work with the best scientists.
They have great research facilities.
There is a lot of room for career growth.

Cons

There is not as great pay or benefits as a biomedical company would have.
My job take up most of my life.

Advice to Senior Management

Have better benefits and salaries even though it is hard to get grants.
Continue to improve research facilities at the University.

Pros

Set hours. Nice coworkers for the most part. Not really stressful

Cons

The rate of pay. untrained managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Give managers more training. Especially in the peoples skills area.

Pros

Great health benefits
Flexible work hours
Interesting environment to work in; little time to be bored.
Lots of ideas floating around
Semi casual dress code!

Cons

It takes forever to get a project moving.
Very little clarity on job duties (ie structure within a department). There's so much overlap and randomness it's sometimes hard to figure out who to contact for what.
Sometimes little clarity on what an end result should look like.

Advice to Senior Management

There needs to be a software system that will hold all the U's data; trying to contact multiple people or go through multiple log-ins/ departments to finish one task has been common in my experience, and it's a pain. It slows everything down. When things slow down, people tend to lose focus and become disinterested.

Pros

This is a large organization with literally dozens of resources in their HR department for training, development, symposiums, etc. The atmosphere of my office was that as long as you completed your tasks, you could be more laid back, socialize, etc. But when there were deadlines (i.e. the end of the fiscal year rush in June) everyone was expected to put in the hours.

Cons

Its strength is its weakness-the university is so large, it is difficult to navigate all its resources. Communication between departments (between our department and those we budget or account for) is awful. Additionally, a recent (2 years ago) switch in enterprise systems has been a rocky transition.

Advice to Senior Management

The financial enterprise system operations must be fixed. Our transition to the new system is not yet complete and the training on the new system is spotty. As a result, my department spends 75% of our time correcting easy errors made by staff in other departments who did not receive accurate training. This is a huge time-waster and bogs down our efficiency.

Pros

If you can find a unit that is less pron to financial downturns (Law, Medical, Business) and take advantage of furthering your education it is a great place to work.

Cons

There is very little turnover and which makes it difficult to get a high paying job unless you move from department to department every couple of years. Jobs positions and pay are very regimented.

Advice to Senior Management

Challenge and engage your employees and help them move toward greatness in their careers and lives.

Pros

Offers flexible work environment for the self directed adult.

Cons

Bureaucracy, disconnect between management and workers. No hope for salary increases based on merit.

Advice to Senior Management

Identify key employees who are working above and beyond and have them mentor others.

Pros

It got all the facilities for doing good chemistry.

Cons

Organic faculty is ok. Its needs to be more vigorous.

Advice to Senior Management

More seminars has to be conducted.

Pros

Professional development - most managers are willing to help employees to learn new skills and will pay for training.
Work/life balance - better than corporate, no matter the complaints.
Opportunities - it's a big place, so moving around is easier than in smaller companies (especially at lower levels)
Benefits - used to be very, very good, but now getting cut every year

Cons

Pay - lower than what you would find outside. My salary is about 70% of the equivalent salary in the corporate world
Politics - people let politics get in the way of logical decisions, which eventually could doom the institution
Management - run by academics, not business people. This has some positives during good times, but is downright scary during the bad times; plus, making faculty do anything is next to impossible.

Advice to Senior Management

The leadership will have to have the guts to make some earth-shattering decisions regarding faculty employment and tenure in order to meet their cuts. That's the hard, cold reality.

Pros

Very broad organization; many different sub-units that do many different things. It is not all books and teaching. Very interesting architecture on many buildings makes walking around campus interesting.

Cons

Campus is in the bad part of town; police are overburdened; crime around the workplace is an ongoing problem and danger. Students leave their mark (vomit) all over the place. Coming to work on Mondays in the winter is gross because shop owners don't chip the sidewalks clean. The chunks just wear away as the week goes on. Pretty disgusting and too common.

Advice to Senior Management

I wouldn't know where to start. There's a lot that needs fixing. Doing a basic 'clean up' like one of the mayors of New York did to turn around Times Square would be a start.