Eastman reviews

In recent years Eastman has put increasing pressure on employees, and people are getting really burnt out. Workload is high and the company is continuing to reduce headcount (combining or eliminating roles, not backfilling when people leave, company-wide layoffs, etc). Current “efficiency and effectiveness” initiative is supposed to create more free time for employees but it’s a joke; impotent at best and counterproductive train wreck at worst. Advancement opportunities are increasingly limited, as leadership roles continue to be consolidated/eliminated AND are most often filled with external hires. A common joke (and sad reality for many stellar performers) is that the only way to get promoted at Eastman is to leave. Institutional knowledge is evaporating as teams are stretched thin and experienced employees resign or retire in frustration. This loss of knowledge and experience is evident in the increasing number of operational issues and inefficiencies across the company. Many employees share grave concerns about the strategic direction of the company and integrity of the leadership team, as they are unwilling to heed the warnings of technical experts and pivot from the disastrous course of action they have committed to, choosing instead to hear what they want to hear and allow catastrophically dysfunctional billion dollar projects to proceed.

For several years, Eastman has been reducing benefits and engaging in negative performance feedback and rewards, due to "benchmarking" against the industry averages. We have better than average benefits, so management views this as a cost savings opportunity. In the last two years they have started forcing the lower management to reduce the bonuses of more people, by larger amounts, as a way to provide funds to reward the high performers. This year there is a forced distribution of "exceeds", "meets", and "does not meet" expectations, with the further addition of "partially meets." They say this doesn't mean "does not meet", but what other conclusion is an employee to come to? They also claim this isn't a forced distribution, but the implementation of the system does indeed force it at very low levels. This is moving to a system where it is necessary for one of your coworkers to lose, for you to gain. This kind of system has been rejected as not workable by companies like GE that used it for years.