HNI Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at HNI full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – 1. Exposure to a lot of different manufacturing processes - wood, laminate, steel, fiberglass, plastic etc
2. Get trained on structured design and development processes with good standard operating procedures (The documents and spreadsheets are there to follow, even if implementation is not always executed as per the prescribed process).
3. Large engineering groups to fall back on.
4. Big company, not too shabby resources for employees to really take charge and self-learn on things like lean manufacturing, Design for Manufacturability, Product Management etc.
5. Different brands, different price points. Can switch between different HNI OpCo's for quick exposure.

Cons – 1. Too much hierarchy.
2. Meet a lot of people who treat their positions as jobs, not careers.
3. Lot of incompetent people hired to top positions.
4. Company gives more relevance to communication skills and not level of education etc (For instance, they will consider an internal candidate who has a Bachelor's in General Studies for an Engineering or Product Management position, over a candidate who has a Bachelor's and Master's in Mechanical Engineering, more diversified experience for the same positions).
5. Very low starting salaries. Profit sharing is a joke.

Advice to freshers: Get a job here, work your behind off, learn all you can and leave. Do not plan on staying more than 2-3 yrs or you WILL get pigeonholed in your career.

Advice to Senior Management – Work on better ways to retain your engineering talent.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company