Hartz Mountain Reviews

3.4

52% would recommend to a friend

(69 total reviews)

Tatsuya Suto

73% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

Hartz Mountain has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 69 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Hartz Mountain employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Manufacturing industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

69 reviews
2.0
22 Mar 2015

A horse with blinders

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits and 401k matching are actually very good. The majority of the people who work for Hartz are intelligent, easy to work with, and are approachable. Great vacation allotment and management is awesome when it comes to sick days, bereavement, etc.

Cons

A revolving door of marketing staff. In the past 3 years.Twice as many brand managers have left than have been replaced. "Working your way up" means nothing. Time spent as an employee amounts to nothing in regards to promotion or salary increases. Upper management receives quarterly bonuses while the entire company receives 1% raises annually. Ownership (Japanese firm Unicharm) feels distinctly separated from the American staff in everyday working environments. Routinely changes strategy on a whim. Forces managers to introduce Japanese products to the marketplace while completely disregarding advice from marketers who have years of experience in the industry. The "supreme leader" from Unicharm who is ultimately the final approval on literally everything will often fall asleep during product evaluations, presentations on innovation, or whenever he feels tired. There appears to be an intended cultural and societal separation between ownership employees and Hartz employees. Ownership penny pinches on everything from the mundane to the nonsensical. Not allowing international salesman to travel to forcing employees to purchase lunch and dinner at corporate sales events. Majority of back end systems, email, document submissions, etc are extremely outdated - routinely do not work correctly - and training for these systems are non-existent. If an issue does arise, finding the person who can help fix the issue continuously refers you to others that also have no idea what they're doing. Little to no team cohesion, no corporate culture, no team building ever. Each marketing category teams appears to run autonomously from one another and cross category promotions become a convoluted, disorganized mess. There is little to no actual marketing done by brand managers. The majority are essentially glorified project managers with either no understanding of marketing or do not have the time to actually apply it. Complete lack of understanding, comprehension, or interest in online marketing or advertising by ownership. Ignorance to the impact of effective ecommerce, search engine marketing, social marketing, analytics or anything digital for that matter demonstrates a late 1990's understanding. The majority of Hartz' products available on etailers websites are not consistent in any aspect. The responsibility of maintaining these properties is not actually known. Literally. Ownership of this channel resides somewhere in between sales and marketing known as the void. Where both sides fight to avoid extra work and claim the other is responsible, resulting in neither actually addressing any issues. Providing both sides the ability to never recall who's job it is to maintain the image of the brand in a digital sphere. Website is extremely outdated. Most aspects (people or otherwise) of Hartz' website marketing are defiant to change, progress, or any adaptations of any kind. Digital projects are routinely forgotten, misplaced, or generally left to sit for actual years. When projects are being worked on, project schedules and timelines are generally useless. Completion dates, progress reports, mock ups, etc become irrelevant as they are generally never really followed. Complete lack of resources, motivation, or skill set within the web team.

1.0
16 Apr 2017

Manager Procurement

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Can bring your dog to work, summer Fridays, brand managers who care about their categories, with limited autonomy or creativity.

Cons

A great company to work for before the Japanese took over in late 2011. The company is sinking fast under their "leadership". They failed to understand, by not even trying, how the US market differs from Japan. Problem is selling in Japan is easy, when you compete with one or two other brands. Selling in US is far more complex. They think that having their R&D come up with new products is everything. Perhaps this is true in Japan, in the US this is the cost of entry. There is no plan to reverse the sinking. When the numbers come short for a quarter, they lay off people to curb costs. There have been several rounds of layoffs in the past couple of years. Those who remain live in fear of being the next to go in the next round. It's clearly an us and them mentality, with no prospects for advancement, as middle and upper management positions are filled with Japanese.

1.0
29 Oct 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

knowing what to expect every day, sometimes a fun work environment

Cons

The company will never hire anyone on, they promise to hire them but keep them as temps because they know they have an unlimited stream of unemployed people waiting to be a temp for $8 an hour. I was a line leader and i was a temp, in charge of hartz regular employees that made double what i made, yet i was their line leader. the job was supposed to be 90 days till hire but i was there for over a year and i seen no sign of being hired on.. it doesnt matter how good of an employee that you are, you will not get hired on. The management lies to the higher ups about the status of the factory, and they scapegoat everyday temps to cover up their incompetence. there are people there that get paid 70 k a year that do NOTHING while someone who makes 8$ an hour runs the whole floor.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 69 Reviews

Glassdoor has 73 Hartz Mountain reviews submitted anonymously by Hartz Mountain employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Hartz Mountain is right for you.