Pros
Melaleuca offers the unique opportunity to engage in challenging work for a multi-national organization while living in a smaller, rural community. The company is quite complex and vertically integrated which provides ample opportunity to develop your career. Departments include manufacturing, supply chain, forecasting, marketing, sales, business development, logistics, call center, customer care, events, communications, R&D, QA, etc. as well as the traditional roles of purchasing, finance, HR, legal, IT, etc. The company does a good job of developing talent and providing employees with cross-functional opportunities. I have worked for several organizations and Melaleuca employees are top tier. I was constantly amazed by not only the output but the professionalism and the quality of the work.
Due to the unique opportunity Melaleuca provides, retention (excluding the call center) is exceptional. While I do not know the avg. tenure of corporate employees, I would say the avg. of the departments I worked in was 7+ years (in contrast, my previous employers were probably closer to 3 years).
The longer tenure can create challenges with upward mobility at times but employees who manage their career and are willing to take on additional responsibility outside their 'traditional' career path are promoted and rewarded accordingly. Coming from organizations that were not as open to providing employees with opportunities outside their traditional career path this was refreshing.
While there were several other pros, I will mention just one final item. Having come from publicly traded entities it was a nice change of pace to work for a privately held organization. Instead of making rash, short-term decisions or 'compromising' to meet street estimates, management at Melaleuca made decisions for the long-term. They did not compromise. While some were critical I personally witnessed several of those decisions and considered it a blessing to work for a CEO and management team who (albeit are imperfect) moved forward with the best of intentions and strived to do right by their employees and other business partners.
Cons
While definitely the exception, I would say there is a small contingency of apathetic employees. Since it is impossible to find a professional opportunity equal to that of Melaleuca in the community, some mediocre employees remain and become apathetic. They become 'victims' of 'low wages' and other 'injustices' and do not realize it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. At times the complaints of this small minority can be frustrating. They point to colleagues who left and significantly increased their wages but fail to acknowledge that they had to move to Salt Lake City (completely different demographic and cost of living) to do so. I found that wages were competitive for the area.
