Pros
The pay and benefits for my positions are right in line or above what I would expect for my educatin and experience. I get a lot of pride working for company with such a great reputation behind their name. The company has great advancement opportunities if you apply yourself and show you are a valuable asset in your current position. The company gives annual bonuses bases on the companies past year success which is something I have never experienced at any of my former employers, although they are not balanced across all levels within the corporation. I feel the bonuses should be equally distributed across all employees by one flat percentage since theoretically, we all have a part in the companies continued success. The recognition program has gone by the wayside recently due to the current economic conditions but used to be one of my favorite things about Bose. Formally recognizing people for going above and beyond what is required of them keeps you competitive. I sincerely hope this comes back around soon to improve current morale situations.
Cons
Weaker performers tend to be able to hang on too long hindering progress, and the ability to hold people accountable seems to be a major problem. As with most corpoations, there seems to be a lot of emphasis around pet projects. Individuals involved in those projects get to have free reign of all or most resources where others have to fight to get buy in from senoir management. Communication with the employees is the one area Bose could really use some structuring.. Sometimes the rumor mill is way ahead of the actual communication at Bose by months. I feel that honest and open communication can lead to a more stable and satisfied work force. Items of sensitive nature should still be retained until the appropriate time to communicate them but the need to know items should have a more effective medium to get the message across to all shifts Although much of the time, it takes more people than is necessary to eliminate quality and throughput problems on new or existing products. I feel that the company has a multitude of redundant positions which creates a lot of red tape or hoops that you have to jump through to get things accomplished efficiently. Even with this is mind, If one key person is out on vacation, it may take an additional week to close out an issue due to individuals sitting in positions as strictly figure heads. Bose’s ambition for keeping product more cost effective sometimes overrides their better judgement. We have seem a multitude of products go to cheaper labor alternatives after spending time and resources to streamline processes and increase quality and throughput. It always seems that after we are allowed to spend money to make a product or process better and have a sense of pride in what we accomplished, the products gets taken from us to make it cheaper. This is a serious personal morale issue.