Black & Decker Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Les Ireland provided strong positive leadership : both working 'hands on' and sharing his own experiences as he worked within B & D, as well as providing the right level of leadership and gravitas and a person people aspired to become in their own careers.
People led with their hearts not just their heads which brought results to another level : the commitment and enthusiasm was infectious, the can do attitude and going the extra mile was a happy norm.

Cons – May be needed a bit more process to capture some of the excellence and skills that employees had to give and make some of the results driven work repeatable through simple processes.
Potentially a bit more research into competitors and commercial USPs of others would have made a very good company great.
The US could have looked a bit more to some of the progressive initiatives being drivin in both Latin America and EMEA, then I think the market downturn would have not had such an impact.

Advice to Senior Management – Share 'best practice' across the globe : it doesn't just work regionally 80% of some extremely robust and commercially rich initiatives would have really driven profit, expanded catagories and driven sales.

Current Employee – been working at Black & Decker full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Awesome training program. It's intense and people are competitive. You have a lot of responsibility early on in your career.

Cons – I moved around a lot. It got old uprooting so much. I could have turned down the offers, but then I felt like I would have been overlooks, which almost forced the moves.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep up the good work.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good environment
Smart people
Interesting projects (when available)

Cons – Work was monotonous, not enough variation. Frequent threat of layoffs

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Black & Decker full-time

Pros – Flexibility, Company Vehicle, ability to create promotions

Cons – No value in personnel, the number is all that matters

Advice to Senior Management – Get closer to your field managers, evaluate them based on Management ability rather than sales alone.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker

Pros – -Paid internship is great for college kids; they made school a priority over work.
-Mostly friendly people.

Cons – -Mismanaged IT department means a lot of young talent leaves after internships/a few years of employment, creating a huge demographic gap of two groups: new/short-timers, and people who have worked there for decades.

Advice to Senior Management – Create incentives for your younger talent to stay.

Current Employee – been working at Black & Decker full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great work environment and professionalism of everyone.

Cons – Long hours (afterhours unpaid) and weekends unpaid.

Advice to Senior Management – More incentives for hard workers...

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – B&D provides good advancement opportunities for individuals that show a strong performance. They provide a great career that exposes employees to different roles in the organization in a sort period of time.

Cons – Black and decker is notorious for not having a competive pay structure. They are challenged with forming new roles and then cutting the role when the business climate changes.

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker

Pros – Rotational opportunities within finance group

Cons – Merger with Stanley changed culture completely

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker

Pros – public company, big goals and big risks
open management
great feedback
tons of growth opportunities
great compensation package
outstanding company culture
nice balance of life and work

Cons – public company so at the end of the day you are just a number
Quartly fire drills and high stress to please shareholders

Advice to Senior Management – Because of the just a number, no hard feeling policys, B&D lost an unacceptable number of quality people and it has cost them dearly. Probably will never have the market share that was lost.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Black & Decker

Pros – Very friendly employees easy work and life balance, it can get stressful at times. Office is a friendly environment every day

Cons – A lot of meetings take place and at times can feel pointless. A lot of people competing to do the same thing.

Advice to Senior Management – Better assessment process

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend