Aging company - Anonymous employee Arkema Employee Review
3.0
14 Oct 2017
Anonymous employee
Former employee, more than 1 year
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Good salary and lots of benefits for holidays, annual bonus and activities. Stable and safe work especially if you have a family.
Cons
Lack of innovative mindset and flexibility. Very strict hierarchy not allowing for change and development. Middle-management is really mediocre by not taking up responsibilities, not allowing team bonding and integration. Very few new hires.
Arkema Response
8y
Thanks for your comment. I'm sorry to see that you have such a negative opinion of the middle managers, although one should not generalize. In 2016, we recruited more than 1600 people all over the world. About your "aging" argument, to give you an example: in France, 42% of our white-collar positions were filled by people with less than 29 years old.
I really loved working for Arkema. They are a very fair company (sometimes a but too liberal with work/life balance, i.e. taken advantage of) and treat employees very well. The work, although repetitive, was interesting.
Cons
The manager that hired me was great. Then he moved up and I got a manager that "knew everything" and shot down almost any idea I had. His boss was pretty unfriendly and expected miracles in order to promote/give out raises. This is pretty typical of any company, you just wait for bad mangers to move on, or you move on if you can't take it. I moved on.
Great people
Great opportunities
Willing to give more responsibility/grow
Good work life balance while also still having good drive at work
Cons
Not a lot of cons, everyone is very understanding and the small office could be a downside for resources, but personally did not find that to be an issue