Whirlpool Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Whirlpool full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – 1. Good internal career growth program
2. Challenging and rewarding experiences
3. Good compensation packages
4. Nice, small close knit community
5. Many opportunities to expand life experiences through volunteering

Cons – Managers do have some power to deny an employee the opportunity to take on a new role if they determine that they need that employee for the next 3-6 months which can delay promotion or move to a new position.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Whirlpool full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Decent leadership development programs for recent college graduates.

Cons – Not all managers are great people developers. Choose your manager wisely.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Whirlpool full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Diverse, mostly use data for decision making, in general they invest in people and are well structured. They are pretty true to their values and for the most part have a lot of good people. Location is nice if you enjoy a small town and 4 seasons. Products are interesting.

Cons – WHR tends to run through vice presidents a lot, especially in brand and product marketing; so if you are going there as a director or VP or in their MBA or engineering management development program, be sure to ask questions on this point. if you are being recruited at a senior level. There are a lot of back politics and unique customs, like "socializing the documents before you present at a meeting"--so pay attention to the politics and who has informal power. Town is very small, so if you like city life and lots of choice, live in South Bend or closer to Chicago and commute. Company is overly structured in assessment of talent and it is nearly impossible to be considered a top talent, so many great people leave mid career, unnecessarily. Industry is a tough one and margins are thin, so don't expect a lot of perks.and expect some strange cost cutting behavior if the numbers come in light

Advice to Senior Management – Rely less on Consultants--you already have a lot of smart people, use them and quit wasting the money,; If you only knew how many "BCG" slides were actually created by Whirlpool people and just formatted by BCG, you would be embarrassed. Look at all the people that have left over the past 10 years and see how many CEO's and VP's are at really good companies, that have former Whirlpool experience and ask yourself if you missed something or if something is wrong in the talent assessment process. You lose a disproportionate amount of women and diverse talent...

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Whirlpool full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Whirlpool offers employee discounts on products which is a good benefit. The South West Michigan area is a great place to live. Lake Michigan beaches are awesome. The people are great.

Cons – The performance review process creates a culture were people undermine each other and don't work as a team. Whirlpool fires people as soon as they reach the age of 55. This is age discrimination of course but there is no recourse.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop firing older people. You are loosing knowledge and talent which will reduce product quality. Eliminate the current review process.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Whirlpool full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Looks good on a resume. Forces you to deal with multiple processes, some of which are completely useless, and contradictory to success

Cons – No work life balance, expected to work 12 hours a day

Advice to Senior Management – Come down and see how the real world is working

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Whirlpool full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The company pays a lot of attention to employee engagement, which is fantastic. There are plenty of opportunities to move into new roles and each employee is driven to be an active part of their career development.

Cons – The company is highly "matrixed" - along functional, regional, and product category boundaries - that creates unnecessarily long timing for decisions to be made. They use a "forced ranking" system of performance management - fitting a pool of similar roles into a forced distribution of performance. That drives behavior that places the individual before the company - I have never heard so many comments regarding "PMP" at a company in my life.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue the focus on employee engagement and get rid of the forced ranking.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Whirlpool full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Flexible schedule and good pay.

Cons – Their PMP review system is a joke. With this system, management has to give an employee a "needs improvement" or "exceeds improvement' rating every year regardless of their performance.
Promotion is based on who you know and not what you know or how you perform.
The appliance industry is very competitive now and the only reason Whirlpool has been profitable the last few years is cut backs to cost and not volume.

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of the PMP system. If you can't rely on your managers to give an accurate assessment of each employee, they shouldn't be in management.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Whirlpool as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Good work environment. Get to try new things often. Most of the people are fun to be around. Management takes their job seriously but knows how to lighten up.

Cons – Constant lay offs to temps. Cant afford anything with $10/ hour and no benefits as a temp. Takes two years for direct hire.

Former Employee – worked at Whirlpool full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great place to work for someone looking to move up the career ladder. This company likes to develop its talent. I really liked the products Whirlpool offered and learning about the different brands. Overall I really loved working for this company and left because of my spouse's job.

Cons – At the time I worked there they needed to improve their customer relationship management software. This may not be a con to all people, but it was to me; If you want to move up in this company than you will ultimately end up in Benton Harbor, MI.

Advice to Senior Management – I think that processes needed to be improved to offer more consistancy throughout the organization.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Whirlpool full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – great great company to grow your career by creating opportunity for you to challenge yourself and gain different experience. Love the company culture and company strives to engage employees.

Cons – between brand, category, finance, procurement, engineering..... they all have global structure and regional team, think about the complexity when it comes to decision making. won't say it's the most efficient company in the world. plus, they shuffle people around quickly and they won't even get chance to execute their strategy yet.

Advice to Senior Management – who really owns P/L? too many people have say in it

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company