Pros
The individual contributors are terrific team players who value patient safety as a personal top priority. If you are paid in the official band, the pay is fairly competitive -- but it is well-known that you need to come from outside the company for that to happen. Most people wear jeans unless there's an external meeting, even senior leadership. Culturally, you can talk to just about anyone at any level; a senior leader isn't going snub you. There are departments that are really fantastic. The work force is diverse. Hate has no home here. The CEO supports alternate work arrangements and has given his email address to employees with the directive to contact him if their manager doesn't. Round Lake has cubicles. There is a Downtown flex office. It's a global company, so you have the opportunity to learn from your counterparts around the world. The ex-US employees seem very engaged and usually happy to collaborate.
Cons
Whooo boy. Got ethics? Within the last few years, some senior leaders have been pushing employees to do things that are flat out unethical. There is an ethics hotline, but if you provide the information anonymously, nothing comes of it. If you raise your concerns to management or to HR, some of the businesses -- not all, but some -- will dismiss your concerns. If multiple people raise the same concern, the concern is still dismissed. This has caused a great deal of disengagement from the work force. The data on the yearly surveys shows this. Senior leader after senior leader handles this by telling the work force to be engaged, essentially blaming the worker for wanting cultural improvement rather than taking ownership for their retaliatory and corner-cutting choices. Many (not all) in management are retaliatory. HR supports the business on anything that isn't blatantly breaking labor code. In theory, we have a culture of respect and certainly the common man behave respectfully and collaboratively... but there are several managers all the way up to the senior, corporate VP level who are known to be belligerent. As long as their belligerence is not targeting a legally protected group, it's supported by HR. HR has directed concerned employees that they need to better manage-up. All of this is not an issue in every business. The culture can swing wildly between business to business, from extremely supportive to flat-out worrisome. At this point, I would neither recommend nor dissuade someone from working for the company; I would tell he/she to research the management all the way up the chain. Some departments are still great. HR does not support the CEO's vision of alternate work arrangements. Individual managers are provided complete authority and can rescind written AWA agreements at will. The CEO's email address is, of course, managed. You must be in a position at least two years before you are allowed to apply for another job within the company. Reorgs happen often, so this can lead to people leaving the company rather than simply applying for another job internally. Deerfield has row upon row of call center-style work stations that pretty much everyone hates.
