Whirlpool Reviews

Pros

Flexible with time off. Great people in manufacturing.

Cons

The company is so disinterested in finding educationally qualified engineers that they will stick the engineering label on anyone. Some of the so called engineers have an Engineering Technology degree (which is not ABET accredited as a real engineering degree). Some people have an Associates degree and many, many of them have no education whatsoever. If you wonder how much importance management places on education credentials go look at the company org charts. The education section is OPTIONAL. The management is often promoted based on ethnicity or sexual gender (or preference to foreigners) and many managers have neither the educational credentials nor any experience whatsoever...this certainly does nothing to diminish their complete arrogance. Additionally, the company is so C2C process obsessed that a simple 2 hour task takes months to do. I can't blame them for feeling the need to hold engineer's hands and constantly monitor what they do, however. If I hired in the people they do for high level positions, I would want to watch them constantly too. I do not know of one engineer in the entire corporation that I would trust to design anything without the need to get help from 50 of their collegues and 10 X the time to finish the job as would be required, were they not so process obsessed.

Advice to Senior Management

Get experience and proper credentials and come back in 10 years. By the way..get some CAD people that know how to design.

Pros

The work/life balance is good.

Cons

Midwest culture can be slow and uninspiring.

Pros

Very good benefits with good time-off capabilities. Pay is minimal, a lot of growth support from management...Good benefits with good 401K match.

Cons

Struggling in bad economy, going for cuts in quality, too many layers of management, decisions are made by people whose sole purpose is to make decisions rather than by people whom the decision will be implemented by.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your front line employees and include them in decision making, they are the most informed and they are the ones who will implement change.

Pros

Diverse opportunities for employees in Leadership Development Programs (LDP)
Laid-back work atmosphere (at least in Hilltop South)
New headquarter buildings being built in Benton Harbor
Small town...good if you don't like alot of distractions
Good experiences that can be utilized at WHR or can be considered easily transferable to other companies

Cons

Resource constraints cause each employee to have a growing amount of work with no end in sight and no extra compensation for the extra effort.
Few projects actually get completed, they are often cancelled from above with little notice or fizzle out due to employees being spread too thin (difficult to get traction/help with your projects)
Challenging to get IT work done in a timely fashion due to recent changes to GIS organization
Small town...not very diverse, not much to do on weekends
You must seek out promotions on your own

Advice to Senior Management

Have a genuine concern for the people who work for you. Current mentality from management seems to be "at least you have a job, so we can get you to do what we want because we know there are not many other opportunities in the town". Employees are beginning to observe this mentality and may start getting restless and consider leaving St. Joe.

Don't be so afraid of new technologies!

Pros

Good working environment, respect and inclusion among fellow coworkers, lots of training opportunities , offers the opportunity to travel and work in projects with other cultures and countries, offers job/career mobility within the company, nice and safe facilities in mexico at least, the opportunity to work with talented and smart people with enormous potential and expertise in their areas. Customer focused, facts, data & six sigma mentality focused which is great. This is a perfect company to start a career after school or masters degree, then after some years go get some other better paying jobs or mind your own business.

Cons

over the years and lately with the integration of Maytag, its become a big big company now with a huge variety in global leadership of both the good and poor type.., human resources seems far away from peoples issues, work resources such a s good laptops and tools are limited for employees, "save cents lose dollars" mentality, wages not competitive versus similar companies (mexico & USA). Disengagement with closure of plants in the USA. Sense of bad competition and lack of integration among global design & manufacturing sites, some level of discrimination & disruptive competition between world sites (btwn usa, china, europe , brasil, mexico & india), sometimes whirlpool's values in practice dont match the statement, but this is inherent to a huge company.

Advice to Senior Management

support employees at the base level, improve wages, provide and use material resources wisely, provide better global integration

Pros

Big multinational company, with opportunities to work overseas.
Opportunities to work in different projects / areas with people of very different backgrounds.

Cons

Big company, that is sometimes slow to move.
Has somewhat some glass-ceiling feeling inside of it.

Pros

Family oriented community
Dedicated, hard-working employees
Respectable products

Cons

IS department under poor recent leadership
Long, gray winters.

Advice to Senior Management

Step up your focus on talent management of existing staff.

Pros

Time off / Holiday's Vacation
Smaller feel for large company
Education Reimbursement
Co-Workers & the 'Rank & File' Workers

Cons

Salary's for persons who grow within the company aren't competitive
For Corporate Career advancement must live in Benton Harbor, MI at headquarters - need more flex work options
Silohed Organization with Top Down Management Approach

Advice to Senior Management

Review compensation, Whirlpool is not competitive with our "home grown" talent. Corporate sales force (eg. National Accounts, Big Box, Sales Staff) is under paid vs. competition and other parts of the organization. More opportunity to relocate and have flex work arrangements. Take a look at your promotions and talent pool process; quite inconsistent across brand/category/sales etc. More often than not, people are promoted to new positions prior to full accountability for completion of a project/strategy, they need to take accountability for the success and/or failure rather than passing it along to another employee.

Pros

good leadership, nice and supportive co-workers, a good place to learn, excellent culture, developing new exployees, torlent mistakes for new workers

Cons

very hard to change the work process, need more advanced information tools, need much more diversity as an international company

Advice to Senior Management

foucs on the design work of the refrigator is very improtant, need to be more creative in the design team

Pros

Whirlpool provides many opprotunities to develop.

Cons

A clear Long term strategy is not always clear and executed. Short term product plans are usually developed only 6 months before executing, which creates confusion and delays in the commercialization phase.

Advice to Senior Management

Develop a clear Long Term Strategy and allow sufficient time to execute it.