New Balance reviews

The company functions on politics, you have to know someone who knows someone to move up the ladder. Most people who have been there 5+ years think they are better than the rest, creating a toxic culture and they fail to be inclusive. Growth is really really slow, and HR doesn’t do anything about it or about the bad apples. They don’t value young talent and take advantage of them.

Communication between teams is severely lacking, causing confusion and resentment between groups. The communication that does make it to most associates is focused on what executives think is important and shows no understanding of the reality for the employees. Obviously executives perform different functions than other employees, but no effort is made to see the impact of their large-scale decisions. High level managers almost never visited my department or talked to people who worked there. Temporary associates and their managers were allowed to believe they had almost guaranteed full time slots on the team but were later told that this was not the case, after some individuals had been with the company over a year. In St. Louis, favoritism is rampant. I saw several people promoted to management positions, or have positions created just for them, with no interview process being followed. This resulted in people being placed in roles they were not qualified for. For my department this meant systems critical to our functions did not work for years and common sense initiatives could not move forward. The favoritism has led to a high degree of politicking. To get anything done it is necessary either to cozy up to someone and gain their favor over others, or spend weeks to months badgering them to offer help even on easy items. There have been many recent layoffs, including just before Christmas. Management and HR will not provide any information about the future of organizational changes, eroding trust.