Though not officially stated, Autoliv is a company that is looking to eliminate as many people as possible whenever it’s possible. Rather than eliminating waste and reinvesting people, they prefer to reduce heads in order to pad stock prices. When reduction isn’t possible they try to move labor to cheap countries, often to the detriment of daily operations.
Even though the Americas region is the biggest division in terms of sales, decision making is centralized and tailored to plants in Europe.
If there is ever a dip in sales the first thing they do is require workers take time off (PTO if available but non-comp if not). It makes sense from a direct labor standpoint, but for IT and indirect support it doesn’t reduce the projects that are still required, so you just end up making up for it on the weekends and evenings. Leadership doesn’t really understand the role of IT in terms of support. They’ll require you to take time off when it benefits the company, but don’t staff enough people to cover for you when you are gone. If the plants are still running then there is an unspoken expectation to be available all the time, even during “required” time off.
Teams are staffed to “put out fires” but are then tasked to support all kinds of projects from various executives pushing their agenda.
