Great coworkers, disconnected, ineffective and cultish management
Pros
- ECCO (the global entity) makes good products, and usually surpasses its peers in support for its employees and the environment. - ECCO USA offers excellent health coverage at reasonable cost sharing. The cost for a family was approximately $300 a month, the care did not have a deductible like most plans, meaning use of the health care was extremely cheap. - The rest of the benefits were pretty standard. Leave starts at 2 weeks + holidays and a couple flex holidays, there is cheap dental and vision, 2 free pairs of shoes a year + an excellent, stackable 60% discount all the time.
Cons
In the past year and a half, the company has seen a significant change in upper management, from the CEO of the parent org on down. Generally I think this is a wise choice (see above), however some of the new management seems... lacking. The new CEO of ECCO USA, in his first address to the company, was unable to remember the name of the town the HQ is in. Later, he intentionally pronounced wrong as a "joke", while simultaneously announcing that the talent pool in NH is too limited for his taste, so many new positions will be hired in NYC. It was tone deaf and implied the new CEO thinks NH is full of uneducated yokels. Around the same time, the new IT CIO laid off several key employees as part of a restructuring, with no shared plan whatsoever how the products they supported would continue to be supported. This has led to internal chaos and several emergencies in our production environment. Work from home has been, in my opinion, very poorly handled. Most of the corporate office employees worked from home successfully for approximately a year - we were lauded by management about how everyone pulled together and were able to perform their work as well or better then before. A survey was sent out, the results I don't think were ever shared with us, and everyone has been required to return to the office at least 3 days a week. At the same time, the office is running out of desk space in some departments, and it's openly discussed that new positions will be hired anywhere if that's what's required by seat availability or talent location. It's a slap in the face to have worked for ECCO for years, demonstrated over and over your commitment and quality of work, but not be trusted to work from home or make your own decision what works best for you, while new hires will possibly get that benefit. ECCO is inefficient in hiring. Positions are sometimes not posted for months after they've been discussed/open up. The position I was hired into, I first learned the position was coming six months before I was finally hired. This has a knock-on effect - employees that are promoted are expected to work their new job and old job for possibly months, and then assist when a replacement is finally hired. Many key positions have no backup or contingency plan. ECCO front line employees are spread extremely thin and there is very little time available for documentation or cross-training. When one of these people leave, it creates a scramble to perform a rushed handover, then months of issues. Personally I had not received any sort of pay raise or adjustment since after 2018.
