Management Unfamiliar with Basic Business/HR Practices
Pros
I worked with some great people at Loomis--driver/guards, cashroom, coinroom and vault employees, mechanics. That's pretty much the only reason I stayed as long as I did.
Cons
General: Extremely toxic work environment which was not only tolerated by management but propagated by them. Once in-house HR officer was forced into retiring, there was no outlet whatsoever for employees to express discomfort with the hostile, divisive attitude of their supervisors. At least one promotion was promised to a candidate before interviews with several other (arguably better qualified) candidates had even been interviewed. That candidate told everyone he already had it, leaving his coworkers to go into their interviews knowing they weren't going to get the job. Department-specific: CMS: Lack of training and reference materials (neither digital nor hard-copy) made Loomis an excessively difficult place to be a new employee and to ensure existing employees are all on the same page. It is a fast-paced environment requiring a great deal of customer-specific knowledge. Rather than maintaining a database of this information for employees to refer to when processing a new account or one they have not processed in some time, the standard behavior is to ask someone else. Because procedures and expectations are never written down and only occasionally verbalized, the individual answering the question may or may not have the most accurate information and may be frustrated at having to answer the same questions over and over. When meetings are called because too many processing errors are occurring, employees are reminded to ask questions if they're not sure, rather than just guessing--and later publicly berated for asking those questions, often with the accompanying phrase, "You should just know that." Which is neither helpful nor fair, considering that the information is not recorded in any form, save the odd unlabeled Post-it with a string of digits. There is no system of regular performance review. Not only is there no recognition of individuals' improvements and successes, when an employee has not met expectations, he or she is given vague criticism such as "You're too slow" or "Make better decisions." Never once was I given (nor did I witness anyone else being given) a measurable, quantifiable goal by which to gauge my own performance. No "here's how you're doing now; let's set this goal for improvement and revisit in a week/a month/three months/etc."