Growth, Mismanagement, and Dissonance
Pros
Perks include free coffee/tea, fun semi-annual celebratory events, and above-average health benefits and retirement matching. There are many awesome people who work here, who show up every day with great work ethic and a willingness to get the job done. Work environments are generally well-lit, clean, and safe. Overtime is often available, though rarely mandatory. Pay, profit sharing, and benefits are good enough to make it hard to walk away to a new employer, though many highly-skilled employees are starting to leave for new opportunities and it is common to hear of employees actively looking for their next job. Especially for new hires, it's a better place than most, but old-timers tend to have a lower opinion of the company compared to what they saw in the past. If you have friends in high places, it can be a great, cushy place to work!
Cons
A decade ago, the company received strong recognition for its furniture designs and for how employees were treated as one of the top small businesses to work for in the US. Landscape Forms has grown into a company that now only receives recognition for its furniture as it becomes increasingly corporatized. It feels as if employee well-being takes a distant back seat to profits and unsustainable revenue growth. Leadership is continuously changing and unstable. Senior leaders are clannish and distant from all but their superiors or immediate subordinates. They frequently have poor reputations among workers and outside vendors. Micromanagement is rampant and trust is rare. Bill Main is no longer President. In my experience, his successor and particularly the soon-to-be new president have not earned anything close to the respect that Bill Main had from the general workforce. The current culture initiative has an air of brainwashing with a one-size-fits-all approach, regardless of personality or preference of the employee. Employees are tired of having to maintain false enthusiasm for mottoes and claimed values that see inconsistent practical applications in the day-to-day of operations, yet there is a general atmosphere of fear that they will be fired if they don't. It feels very often that many, particularly in the upper levels of employment, operate on the mentality that "there is no 'You' in TEAM." They are concerned only with their own interests and anything outside of their view is unimportant; the result is that corners get cut at one phase which creates much more work for others later. There are no consequences for such behavior. Certain departments and individuals get far better treatment than others. It is a once-stellar company that appears to be working its way back to something on par with many large, unremarkable employers, though its leadership will have you believe it's the best there is.