The bottom line is that Covanta is a publicly held company that is only concerned with meeting its annual revenue targets in response to a profit-driven Board of Directors. This company has had a financially troubled history – it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization in 2002, only to hit financial turbulence again in 2013. Just after the 3rd quarter ended in 2013, the CEO sent around a company-wide email to all employees letting everyone know that the company had already forecast that it was going to fail to meet its 2013 revenue target and that no one should expect any bonuses at the end of the year. One month after that, a company-wide “reorganization and realignment” was announced, and news of the layoffs began. When it realized it couldn’t meet profit targets, the company instead instituted massive budget cuts, including cutting people’s jobs, to shore up its bottom line. Both short-term and long-time employees were let go. But the senior management team still got their raises after the end of the year.
The culture at the company headquarters is very cut-throat. Everyone is driven to meet whatever performance goals are set for them, because if they don’t, the repercussions are severe. HQ has quarterly “business review” meetings that are literally 8 hours of back-to-back Power Point presentations by regional VPs and business managers detailing the financial health of the facilities under their control. The Power Points are literally charts of numbers, and if the facilities aren’t doing well financially, then lots of red ink dominates the charts. There is huge pressure to meet profit goals and if those goals are not met, lower-level employees suffer. The atmosphere at HQ is also a classic example of “silos” – the departments and divisions are quite insular from each other, but the senior management team exhibits a lot of cut-throat competition in competing against each other for top dog position, who gets credit for successes, and who gets blamed for failures. Overall, the stress level, in my opinion, is not worth working there.
