Alcoa reviews

Alcoa is a company that has businesses everywhere so you would think that it would be easy to find another job in another location but the HR department is so poorly structured that to move from one location to another is difficult. HR is only concerns with dealing with grievances and complaints. At our location there are many from the hourly that have to work twelve hour shifts with mandatory overtime. The salaries are expected to work overtime without compensation. Once you had up those hours your salary does not look so high. It is a good deal for Alcoa who does not need to pay taxes on that free labor. Our business was reorganized and our sales management team was completely ousted, people who truly understood our business (aerospace forgings) were replaced by people who came in like carpetbaggers from extrusion. There was no transition just high jacking of key positions with fancy announcements. The headcount is reduced to the lowest possible level for the non-managerial group so it means that issues are slow to be resolved, employees are afraid to lose their jobs and don’t cooperate. It is a culture that breeds back stabbing and knowledge is not share. I would never recommend to people who like a healthy work environment to apply at Alcoa until they make major changes right at the top.

Management communication of the important things is pretty weak. Depending on which area you work, you may not get an idea of how the company has been doing month to month. No advance notice when they need to make a workforce reduction. The management heirarchy has been flattened to the point where a promotion often means going from relatively bottom-rung straight to senior management. Difficult to see a path upward through the company if that is your goal. Progression in responsibility is always there, and will likely come whether you were looking for it or not. As a result, it seems like a lot of the people get pushed beyond their limits. Corporate parents means corporation-wide initiatives, so there is the occasional trouble associated with trying to fit a diverse bunch of businesses into the same initiative mold.