Pros
People at the Washington and Romeo MI locations are an amazing group. Upper management, however, is quite out of touch with the true needs and desires of the employees. Nowadays, you begin with 2 weeks vacation, 5 sick, 5 personal days, and one floating holiday. There is a holiday shutdown between Christmas day and new years day. Previously, this included Christmas eve, but that was removed by management. There is an option to buy one extra week when selecting benefits for the year. Healthcare is through Blue Cross Blue Shield (as of Aug. 2024), but some benefits may be cut as a part of the carve-out. Employer 401k matches up to 6%.
Cons
In the early stages of the carve-out from ZF into the ZF LifeTec entity, it has been demonstrated that this will begin a decline of employee satisfaction. IT has been unresponsive after computer migration, causing some employees to be without the software required to perform their job. The new servers designated for ZF LifeTec are insufficient, moving at a snail's pace. We have been told to make-do with what we have, but it is not enough. It was also announced that upper management will be enforcing a return-to-office (RTO) 3 days per week in Nov. 2024, and 4 days per week in 2025 (date TBD). It was stated that this RTO is due to sales not meeting upper management's desires. As such, RTO is intended to increase and improve employee interaction, and hasten response to customers. However, what upper management fails to realize is that this will not improve the business, and has been proven to have no effect on overall productivity. The true bottleneck is the lack of support. A hiring freeze that has saddled employees with the work of multiple people. Software and procedures shrouded in bureaucracy, causing a days work to drag over weeks - if not months. The forms, presentations, and approvals required for simple changes are ever-changing and often unannounced. The state of the office is not "magnetic" to employees. I personally suspect older employees will take this as their cue to retire, and younger employees and parents will jump to more flexible companies. Those who are left may conform and compound the issues stated above. The employees are the base of the company, and without them, the peak may seem less impressive.
