Evonik reviews

3.8

75% would recommend to a friend

(817 total reviews)
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Christian Kullmann

56% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

Evonik has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 817 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Evonik employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Manufactura industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

817 reviews
2.0
Mar 8, 2016

Do not apply to work here.

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits package has quite a few options. For example, many health insurance companies to choose from. International travel opprotunities also. My co-workers are talented and extremely intelligent.

Cons

I will get to the point: prospective employees should turn away. The negatives heavily outweigh the positives of working here. Reasons include: outsourcing, time-off policy, unpaid after hours work all come to mind. Several severe thunderstorms came through Mobile County, Alabama site in April 2014. The trailer that housed the IT department was destroyed. The IT staff, numbering between 30 to 40 members, worked from home until temporary office space became available. The temporary offices, however, were offices that were suited for one employee had three employees crammed into them. Another trailer was used but even that trailer had electrical issues. The local IT managers made sure their personal comfort the priority by making sure they had their private offices during all of this. Outsourcing is another issue that possible employees should be made aware of. Parts of IT have been outsourced in the past, Most recently, some of accounting in the Mobile plant lost their jobs. Now, Costa Rica is supposed to be handling those accounting duties. The IT department is currently located in the former accounting building. The new new IT office has been remodeled, but it is not comfortable nor is it functional. Most of IT is stuck in cramped cubicles while the managers, of course, get private offices. It make no sense for this new office to have money spent on a noisy, high end German coffee maker and marble countertops. The money would have been better spent making sure all of IT had enough space among themselves to get work done. You will not receive sick time. "MyTime", which Evonik Mobile uses, means that you get a block of time off to use as you see fit. Sounds great, right? It's not that simple and straight forward. If you need time off, you have to submit a request in advance to your supervisor. Then you wait for that request to be approved or denied. If your supervisor does not like you, he or she can deny that request, even if you have the time off on the books. Now you are absent without leave. "I appreciate you being flexible with your Sundays." This was an overheard statement made by a manager to a employee here. Evonik's time is important; your personal time is not. Specific to IT, you have four SuperSaturdays when maintenance is done. In 2015, Valentine's Day was one of those weekends. In the U.S., there are other weekends when disaster recovery tests are done. Finally, changes and unplanned outages have to be dealt after hours. In short, figure you will be working more than a reasonable amount of unpaid overtime if you are an salaried employee. The pay I receive would be correct if I was working 40 hours a week. However, my pay is low because of the hours and hours that go beyond those 40 hours. As large and as global Evonik is, this company can afford to employ additional employees. Bonuses amounts have decreased after Evonik went public.

4.0
Sep 6, 2018

Site Engineering Mobile, AL

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working for Evonik, as a company, is awesome. At least it was for me. Until I joined Site Engineering in Mobile, AL. The company offers great benefits and other programs.

Cons

Site Engineering is profit based maintenance and projects. Meaning that you alone are responsible for finding work within other plants located on site and being "100% billable". That means you have to charge someone for every hour that you work. This is really tough because the plants do not want to pay you to figure anything out, just work. So any research, pre-planning, etc does not go over well with your customers. If you don't have anything to charge, or you don't have a work order, you're expected to spread the hours over existing work orders from other plants. The management team is only worried about KPIs and how much money you bring into the department. They count PTO and training against you as well. Your responsibilities are a never ending list. They will ask you to do anything, and expect you to do it. This includes taking on roles and responsibilities far above your pay grade. This is all so they can rake in more monopoly money. Due to managements lack of understanding in resources and capabilities, there are always unrealistic expectations of the results employees are able to produce. There is no recognition for anything you do well. Management will soak up all the lime light for you, without a single mention of your contribution. But, if you mess up, it's all on you. They will hang you out to dry in a heartbeat. Retaliation is their game as well. They will lie to you about anything and everything. They are not on your side. The political dance between management teams is utterly toxic and has a negative effect on employees lives. Outside of this department, the culture at Evonik is far better. If you can get a job working for any of the production facilities, you'll likely retire there.

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Evonik Response
7y
Thank you for your comprehensive review of your time at Evonik. The role of site engineer is a challenging, but rewarding one for employees within Evonik. As you know, each department within the company is organized differently to best serve its customers and stakeholders. Though each job role comes with challenges, we are glad that you found your work experience to be positive with great benefits and programs.
1.0
Oct 28, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It is located in a very pretty place, fairly new and good facility and equipment, salaries and benefits good to fair, but that is not enough to make it a good place to work.

Cons

Originally called Brookwood, then Surmodics, now Evonik, no matter what the name, the management and supervisory staff was, for the most part, shockingly immature and childish. In the employee evaluation meetings, I heard the most petty, childish, unconstructive things said by managers in public about their direct reports. Not from all, but it was tolerated by all, especially the top bosses. It would feel like being stuck in an eighth grade clique or "mean girls" movie. Not to imply this was one sex or the other, both male and female managers have a problem with maturity. I would also hear managers throughout the years refer to their employees using dehumanizing terms, almost like they were mechanical tools. The top management also encouraged an atmosphere of "separatism", the employees who had originally come over from SRI in the beginning (2005, I think) were heralded, over and over again, as the great explorers who risked their lives to head westward in the great expansion. Everyone else was left to feel like the unwashed hoards. Get over it.

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