Colgate-Palmolive Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Colgate-Palmolive full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The company relies to heavily on its branded name.....Turn and burn

Cons – The company does not value its people. Everyone just passes the buck. I don't see how anything gets accomplished.

Advice to Senior Management – You really need to start living your proposed values.....

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Colgate-Palmolive

Pros – Stable Co. Meets OP target as per Wall Street.
Good Dental Benefits
Co. Store

Cons – Micro Managing. Lack of Direction. Chaos IT Dept.
Middle Managers are Non-Technical making tech. decisions. Some even don't have right qualifications for IT jobs. Completely Fake HR. HR works for managers.
Promotions are given based on Friendship and Likings.
High level managers with power hires their friends and family members. Amazing...
How does HR approves this GOD only knows!!!!
No Planning. When things goes wrong trying to find fault and finger pointing instead of fixing the issues. No training provided. No travel/training for real tech. people but Mgt. flies 1st class around the world without any issues. What a joke!!!!
India runs the whole IT show.

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of Non-tech managers. Give them another round of VERP.
Trust your people. Spend money on training.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Colgate-Palmolive

Pros – Good place to gain international exposure as 80% (and rising agressively) of business is outside US
Great place for women and minorities.
If you have a good manager, you can obtain interesting projects.

Cons – Steadily reducing benefits and training opportunites for years.
Heavily offshoring both development and manufacturing.
HR is completely unresponsive to employees and applicants, a blessing since their information often conflicts.
Excuses given for arbitrarily promoting or not promoting personnel border on insanity.
Though they preach "Managing with Respect", managers can give poor reviews without any explanation of reasons to employees with great long term records.

Advice to Senior Management – Luckily they killed the old HR slogan "Becoming the Best Place to Work". It was very good, but the heavy voluntary attrition of younger workers should indicate the lack of opportunities recently is apparent. It's sad to have seen the decline in morale. Great job keeping the stock price up though!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Colgate-Palmolive

Pros – Opportunity to work abroad,
Salary/benefits

Cons – The company claims to be a caring company. It is, if you play the right political games and are in the "in" crowd. Don't complain about anything,or you will be treated as a second class citizen, and you will find yourself at the bottom of the pile when the far and few between promos come around. Company does a good job of bait and switch. Great compensation, but little of anything else UNLESS you are one of the chosen ones. Leaders with the most obnoxious management styles are rewarded. Those who do the right thing are NOT appreciated. Company is extremely risk averse and relies on it's signature brand to keep it going. They are definitely followers rather than leaders. I would not recommend working at Colgate unless you have a kiss ass mentality and enjoy stepping on others to make yourself look good. It was a very disappointing and unrewarding experience. Definitely glad I left.

Advice to Senior Management – Take a serious look at your management. There is some very unethical behavior, and that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. A caring company? That is a joke!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Colgate-Palmolive

Pros – Most marketers are attracted to Colgate due to its Manhattan location - not many CPG companies are in the city. That means you get bright ambitious, fast-paced people to work around you. It's also an international company and there seems to be some, limited opportunities to move around globally. It also provides a strong brand name for your resume. Because it is such a lean organization, you will be given lots of responsibilities and exposure.

Cons – I wasn't prepared to work 80 hours a week - as an ABM, you get thrown in - sink or swim - you are expected to perform without any real support. (Although if you come in the global program, you get more measured time to adjust). It is a lean organization with both retention issues and continuous shifts within, which means lack of transitions. It is a traditional, conservative company that is steeped in 'processes' which means you're continuously working on the next presentation cycle and do not have time or focus to be proactive about furthering the brand. Your day is filled and overbooked with meetings and you don't actually start working until the rest of the world goes home starting around 5.

Advice to Senior Management – Value employees more - keep with industry standards and provide 3 weeks vacation, not 2 to people with experience and Master's degrees (- it's abusive). Make managers more responsible for the development of their subordinates instead of task masters who are always trying to cover themselves. Reassess all the processes - many of them are hampered by vital cross-functionals that have no incentive to help marketing and lack accountability. Why after so many iterations for each process, does everyone start painfully over again?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend