OMNOVA Solutions Reviews

Thank you for sharing your perspective and for your many years of service at OMNOVA. We strive to keep employees engaged and informed through ongoing announcements, webcasts, and quarterly town halls. Effective communication is crucial to our collective success, and we are always looking for ways to make it better! If you have specific ideas, please share them with any member of the HR team or with your supervisor.

Thank you for the feedback!

Lyanna Shihada, HR Generalist... MoreLess

I am sorry to hear you are having a negative experience at OMNOVA Solutions. It’s always challenging to get this kind of feedback, particularly when it appears an employee’s experience doesn’t match everything we strive to be as a company. Please permit me to share some thoughts about your post.

1. We actively try to build trust and respect in the workplace. If your experience is the opposite of this, I would like to discuss how we can make it better for you. OMNOVA’s success relies upon open communication and transparency.
2. Working 12-16 hour days is not productive. On occasion, our employees put in extra hours for projects with tight deadlines or high-reward opportunities, but a regular schedule of 12- or 16-hour days is, in fact, counterproductive. Consult with your manager or contact me so we can address this issue.
3. I won’t argue that we set difficult-to-reach goals. As a company we must aim high and stretch to reach our objectives, otherwise we won’t find new and better ways to be successful. We encourage our employees to live our core values, which include accountability for meeting our commitments, but also acting with the integrity to have candid, transparent discussions about objectives and performance requirements.
4. We are working hard to ensure alignment across the organization, from our market-facing teams to our business leaders, and from our technical experts to the operators in our plants - and everywhere in between. In an organization like ours with global opportunities for growth, alignment will always be a challenge. We have made good strides and we will continue to improve in this area.

I thank you for sharing your comments. We want you to feel comfortable raising these issues directly with the team and we support an open-door policy. Please reach out to your manager or myself to discuss how we can make your career at OMNOVA more rewarding and successful.

Suzanne LaRocca
Human Resources Manager, Mogadore... MoreLess

Thank you for taking time to leave a review of OMNOVA. I am sorry to hear that you did not enjoy your experience as part of our team.

I’m curious of your claim that you had 10 supervisors in three years, as I’m not aware of any places in our organization that have experienced that amount of change. Granted, we have restructured our organization twice in the last 15 months. But, like many companies who serve highly competitive global markets, we are willing to restructure to better meet the needs of those markets. In fact, we consider our ability and willingness to do so a strength …one of our core Values is Agility. This, plus promotions, retirements, and other normal turnover may have resulted in some employees having multiple leadership changes. After reviewing the data, however, I can’t find any groups that have had the amount of turnover in supervision that you are describing.

As to the composition of our workforce, while the overall number of employees have remained largely the same over the past year or so, we have taken affirmative steps to reduce layers of management and build a lean leadership structure. This has led to the elimination of a number of senior roles in the organization, in favor of more junior roles. Today we have a leadership team with a span of control that is equal to or greater than comparable companies. This means fewer senior leaders and more team members - and stronger teams - across the organization.

To your observation about pay practices, we develop our merit budgets each year with a goal of being at or above market and have consistently been so for at least the past 5 years. Our “pay for performance” philosophy means that we distribute financial rewards based on performance. Top performers are receiving financial rewards much better than the industry average, and we are proud of that!

We are constantly looking to get better, and deeply value input from all our employees …past, present and future. I would be happy to discuss your particular experience with you. Please call to arrange a discussion if you like. In the meantime, I’m sorry you had a disappointing experience and wish you the best of luck.

Mike Quinn
Sr. VP & Chief Human Resources Officer... MoreLess

Thank you for your post. We welcome feedback, even when it is unpleasant to hear.

It is true that OMNOVA – like many companies – changes its organization structure to respond to demands in the marketplace. In fact, we are proud that one of our core Values is Agility: we seek to be nimble and adjust quickly to changes in customer needs or market conditions. Our recent restructuring was just that: a realignment of our business to better serve our markets. And while it’s true that a small number of positions were eliminated, many more (over a dozen) employees were promoted or enjoyed expanded roles as a result of these changes. Our people are the key to our success, and we are grateful to be able to promote from within as often as we do.

It sounds as though you had a less than terrific relationship with your manager …I’m sorry to hear that. On the whole, our leaders work hard to stay in touch with their teams, through 1:1 meetings, skip level meetings, frequent networking meetings and town hall meetings. We also seek feedback frequently through both formal and informal channels. Our senior leadership team, for example, just completed 360-degree reviews and developmental feedback from expert coaches. We take this feedback seriously and incorporate it into our ongoing development.

Your experience seems to be very different than the norm for OMNOVA employees. I would be very happy to meet with you to hear more if you’d like to share. Please call my office anytime and I’ll be happy to make myself available.

Thank you again for your feedback. I wish you the best of luck in your future.

Mike Quinn
Sr. VP & Chief Human Resources Officer... MoreLess

Thank you for your feedback. We embrace all feedback even when it is hard to hear. OMNOVA’s Auburn Facility is going through a significant transformation and challenged with growing pains. We are investing in it by growing our production workforce, and building a strong management team to satisfy our growing customer demands. We value all of our team members for their efforts in supporting the Auburn business as we work together towards success. I highly encourage reaching out to your supervisor to pass along any suggestions on how we can work more safely, improve plant performance in quality or efficiency, or other thoughts on how OMNOVA can achieve success at Auburn.

Thank you for your feedback and joining our Auburn Team!

Dan Dunmeyer
HR Director, US Operations... MoreLess