OMNOVA Solutions Reviews

Thank you for offering your perspective of the organization and for your service to OMNOVA Solutions. We take pride in our culture and are committed to the success of our employees. I am happy to hear of the collaboration and accountability you experience among your coworkers.

We understand the importance of the balance between work and at-home life. The recent changes to our leave policy were designed to give our employees more flexibility with any paid time off. I would suggest connecting with your local HR representative to discuss how we can help you achieve a better balance.

I am pleased to hear you see the potential for growth within OMNOVA. It is an exciting time to be a member of the team and I hope that you continue to voice your opinions to help us achieve greater success.

Sincerely,
Cliff Hardaway
Global Director of Operations... MoreLess

Thank you for your post. As a company, we are approaching the issue you raise with the appropriate level of concern and responsibility and will, therefore, be working to understand the local situation in more detail.

As stated in our core values, we strive for integrity and accountability in our business dealings. This is true for our relationships with all stakeholders, internally and externally. In practical terms, this means we place a high priority on ensuring that employees at all levels of the organization are treated fairly and that at all times our communication with all stakeholders is open and honest. If you want to talk with someone outside your facility, please contact us directly using the hotline or calling my office number. We will be sure to respond.

Sincerely,
Erin Hagen
Global Vice President, Human Resources... MoreLess

Thank you for providing your feedback.

We value the thoughts and opinions our employees provide. As a lean organization, we rely on these observations to help us evolve and succeed. However, it is difficult to speak to generalities.

I would be interested in learning more and I encourage you to reach out to your manager or any member of the HR team, including myself, to discuss any concerns you may have. I hope we can help you achieve a more rewarding future at OMNOVA.

Dan Dunmeyer
Regional Director, Human Resources... MoreLess

Dear former employee,

I am sorry that your experience at OMNOVA was so unpleasant. It is uncommon to hear comments like this; the majority of our employees – even those that choose to leave us – are much more positive. It is difficult to respond to generalities, and I would like to understand better any specific examples that you have that illustrate what you describe here. I invite you to get in touch with any member of the HR team to share your experience …we want to hear!

I’m particularly surprised to hear about your comments on the lack of development. Just in the past few months we’ve had multiple developmental opportunities, networking meetings, and leadership forums where our employees and senior leaders have shared ideas and input about how to make OMNOVA even better. This past week about 40 of my co-workers and I had coffee with the CEO, and we talked about why we loved OMNOVA and shared ideas about new training we’d like to see. In the upcoming few months we have several external speakers coming in, training planned in multiple business processes, and numerous leadership skills events. We are also excited about our OMNOVA Cares week, an annual event sponsored by our charitable foundation that includes things like a toy building workshop for disabled children and the clean-up of a local city park. Our employees are very excited about these events and participation is always high.

Like anyplace else, OMNOVA is not for everyone. I’m sorry your experience was poor. I really would like to hear more if you are willing to share.

Jen Sloat
Human Resources 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