Pros
Staff are great as a collective. Willing to help each other and give advice/training. Sense of humour keeps the place alive, factory banter keeps morale up and gets people through the day. Early start (7am) means shop floor get to go home at 3:30pm and earlier on Friday. Overtime not as available as in the past but occasionally there. Big location draw is for employees in the immediate Fareham / Gosport area. Large car/bike parking facility on site with secure camera operation throughout. Monthly meetings are held for employees to inform about upcoming orders,finances and long term length of service achievements. Staff canteen with vending machines,smoking shelters and HR support for staff. Company pension is excellent as is a generous payout for an employees dependants should staff members die during working service. Also the company operates a sick scheme run along the Bradford points system. Regular hearing and skin tests as well as visual tests (limited amount towards glasses) add to employees well-being.
Cons
Where do I start ??? OK the main bad point has to be the management. I know this is an age old battle between the 'suits' and the shop floor but we've been through it all these past years. When I joined 20 years ago the management had experience and had worked from the bottom to the top and deserved the respect of the staff for their efforts. Recently (last 10 years) the company has been taken over from family/private run investors to global companies who have put top mangement in their positons based on past buisness roles as opposed to what experience they have in our buisness with disasterous results both for the layout of the factory and the resulting product. We used to be a world leader but now find ourselves wondering how the factory gates stay open on a yearly basis. In one year alone we had three MDs, each time one leaves it seems the staff are left to keep the place alive waiting for the next clown to be appointed by a board of officials from abroad to change yet again what their predecessor had emplaced and come up with a system that's even worse. I'm not out to make everything sound negative and would love this place to turn around and be the productive site it used to be, but like many here I've lost faith over the years. Moving on...Pay, this is OK but with the minimum wage increases of late I fear this site becomes less attractive financially to the youth who are understandably the future of this company. Worse point is people don't listen - decisions are made without consulting those in the know. If opinions are raised they are often ignored by those who think they know better at the risk of those with experience. Don't get me wrong, not all management are included in my rant, many long serving supervisors/managers have the respect of the staff (basically those who have worked from the bottom up) and these are the people who should be running the show, I'm sure this would be a better buisness is this was the case. Other negative points are overseen promotions for those who excell in their job roles and more recently an abundance of absurd health and safety rulings which seem more intent on shutting the place down due to restrictions as opposed to making it a safe place for us so called 'adults' to make educated decisions regarding our own safety. Why do people stay - like me, simply mundane complacency !