Videojet Technologies Huntingdon Review - Don't Do It!
Pros
You think you're well paid, but they own your soul.
Cons
I have worked for Videojet Technologies UK in Huntingdon for just a short while and can honestly say this is the absolute worse job I have ever had. I am currently looking for alternative employment (as are several of my colleagues, that I know of). The Videojet UK company is run by an arrogant and un-caring junior management team whose only intent is climbing the greasy pole and lining their own pockets with lucrative bonuses. This is quite often accomplished by discrediting and criticising the more mature, senior staff members who deserve promotion and have a far better knowledge of the business, and by scapegoating the younger members to deflect blame from themselves for missing targets etc. These junior managers are fed daily anonymous email orders by an aloof and distant team in the USA - but unfortunately the American employment model does not work in the UK and I have never seen such a bunch of miserable and unwell people fooling themselves that this is a good place to work. Phrases like: “let’s take a deeper dive,” “take away the learnings,” and “let’s pareto that” (the 80/20 rule) are bandied about willy nilly. Targets, technical and sales, are set on a daily basis and if they are not met, regular disciplinaries are handed out by the untrained kids who attempt to pass as "management." Very much a blame culture here. Videojet UK is very proud to be using an unnecessarily complicated admin system called DBS, the Danaher Business System. This is basically a set of strict rules, dictated by the USA HQ, that every employee must abide by and leaves little or no room for creativity. It basically turns the employees into robots which is actually quite funny as there are posters all over the building professing: "We are NOT robots." So I'm guessing that someone must have pointed this out before. They also profess to abide by a philosophy called Kaizen although no-one seems to actually know what it means (or have even heard of Edwards Deming and his principals of continuous improvement!). Phrases like “Best Team Wins” are regularly bandied about by the junior management cheerleaders, attempting to brainwash each other. The staff genuinely spend more time reporting about what they have done, than doing the actual work itself and there are charts and reports all over the walls that no-one ever looks at – it’s hilarious! The office itself has a toxic atmosphere, with a lot of staff absence and sickness, and I recently witnessed an entire department resign in disgust with regards to the way they, and other employees, were being treated. Regular month-long absence due to stress is commonplace. The actual office building is situated at the back of a very busy Huntingdon industrial estate and on many occasions you will have to queue for up to an hour just to get to the main road (and then another half hour to reach the A14!). If you are considering working for Videojet Technologies UK in any role, I would advise extreme caution as, despite the salary and benefits, appearing attractive at first, you will be miserable. This is not a nice place to work – at any cost!