Pros
Benefits and 401k matching are actually very good. The majority of the people who work for Hartz are intelligent, easy to work with, and are approachable. Great vacation allotment and management is awesome when it comes to sick days, bereavement, etc.
Cons
A revolving door of marketing staff. In the past 3 years.Twice as many brand managers have left than have been replaced. "Working your way up" means nothing. Time spent as an employee amounts to nothing in regards to promotion or salary increases. Upper management receives quarterly bonuses while the entire company receives 1% raises annually. Ownership (Japanese firm Unicharm) feels distinctly separated from the American staff in everyday working environments. Routinely changes strategy on a whim. Forces managers to introduce Japanese products to the marketplace while completely disregarding advice from marketers who have years of experience in the industry. The "supreme leader" from Unicharm who is ultimately the final approval on literally everything will often fall asleep during product evaluations, presentations on innovation, or whenever he feels tired. There appears to be an intended cultural and societal separation between ownership employees and Hartz employees. Ownership penny pinches on everything from the mundane to the nonsensical. Not allowing international salesman to travel to forcing employees to purchase lunch and dinner at corporate sales events. Majority of back end systems, email, document submissions, etc are extremely outdated - routinely do not work correctly - and training for these systems are non-existent. If an issue does arise, finding the person who can help fix the issue continuously refers you to others that also have no idea what they're doing. Little to no team cohesion, no corporate culture, no team building ever. Each marketing category teams appears to run autonomously from one another and cross category promotions become a convoluted, disorganized mess. There is little to no actual marketing done by brand managers. The majority are essentially glorified project managers with either no understanding of marketing or do not have the time to actually apply it. Complete lack of understanding, comprehension, or interest in online marketing or advertising by ownership. Ignorance to the impact of effective ecommerce, search engine marketing, social marketing, analytics or anything digital for that matter demonstrates a late 1990's understanding. The majority of Hartz' products available on etailers websites are not consistent in any aspect. The responsibility of maintaining these properties is not actually known. Literally. Ownership of this channel resides somewhere in between sales and marketing known as the void. Where both sides fight to avoid extra work and claim the other is responsible, resulting in neither actually addressing any issues. Providing both sides the ability to never recall who's job it is to maintain the image of the brand in a digital sphere. Website is extremely outdated. Most aspects (people or otherwise) of Hartz' website marketing are defiant to change, progress, or any adaptations of any kind. Digital projects are routinely forgotten, misplaced, or generally left to sit for actual years. When projects are being worked on, project schedules and timelines are generally useless. Completion dates, progress reports, mock ups, etc become irrelevant as they are generally never really followed. Complete lack of resources, motivation, or skill set within the web team.
