Results Driven, Cost Cutting Company with Average Employee Salary/Benefits and Below Average Leadership.
Pros
If you come through the company as a sales management trainee or a global management trainee (college recruiting programs) you will have access to great opportunities with ABI. The company is very focused on recruiting these employees and putting them into good positions immediately. Senior Management pays close attention to their retention and promotion rates which drives the whole system to focus on their success. If you come through one of these programs and work hard and network well there is no doubt that you will advance quickly. Anheuser-Busch employees are given a great amount of freedom in managing their time and their accounts. There is an expectation that you manage your schedule to get the job done. It can be difficult to keep a good work, life balance (depending on your role and level of responsibility) but it is certainly not impossible if you are a good time manager. Depending on how you are networked into the company there is a lot of opportunity to take advantage of free tickets and access to many different premiere events. Health Care and 401K plans are on par with industry standards. ABI has access to some of the most advanced technology, data, research and programs in world giving their employees a huge upper hand in the wholesale and retail sales environment.
Cons
ABI lacks strong senior leadership. There is a very big disconnect in what current senior management thinks is important to employees and what is actually important to them. Employees are told to stop sweating the 'small stuff' and look ahead - 'small stuff' entailing not making annual bonuses (because of moves sr mgmt has taken, not because of individual performance), or being offered a new opportunity but having standard relocation benefits denied, or not being given the opportunity to grow salary in your current role (the only real way to grow salary is through promotion, merit based increases in current roles are marginal), or after you are promoted being forced to work your new and previous roles for very long time periods (multiple months) in effort to cost save. ABI also keeps travels budgets so slim that it is difficult to keep the account call schedule that is needed. Budgets are issued every year using a zero based budgeting model, and are almost always cut drastically halfway through the year. Instead of addressing these issue that cause low employee moral, ABI chooses to try to engage employees through chants and cheers and war cries. There is a lot of pressure to assimilate and participate in the cheering and 'hoorah' or risk being labeled as an employee who does not represent the company culture - which is an internal way of blacklisting. ABI is a great place to get experience as it is a cutting edge company in many areas. It is not a great place to have a career if you expect to have mutual respect, understanding and influence between the employee and senior management. To all future ABI employees: Do not be lured by the prospect of large bonus potentials with ABI. Even during banner years of revenue, profit and market share employees have received only a very small percentage of bonus potentials (if any at all). Your base salary is the only income channel you should depend on. Negotiate this base well as each new promotion will only see a 10-12% increase from there forward. ABI advertises a goal of having all employees at 80% of their pay band but the reality of this is incredibly rare even in seasoned employees.
