1. Career Advancement & Growth: To advance within the company you need to play on the "good 'ol boy team," (i.e. promotions are given based on fraternization). Hard work, education & experience don't play a role in helping you to advance. Also, I would not recommend this as a company that is 'pro' advancement for minorities, as I've seen many overlooked for promotions many times even though they have the experience, knowledge and degrees.
2. Company Acquisition/Communication: This company has acquired 2 other companies within the past 5 years and both transition phases were tedious and drawn out, which left and still leaves a lot of the employees on edge. For example, a week ago employees had to find via external media sources about the company's plan to downsize their workforce by 10,000 worldwide. As a company it severely lacks communication to employees on what's going on within the company and when communication is given it's ambiguous and watered down and doesn't really give much clarity or direction on what's going on. There's also a major disconnect in communication on what goes on in the field (sales & service) to what corporate perceives. Instead of getting feedback from field personnel and applying it to corporate strategies, strategies are formed based strictly on "data" (which in some cases is questionable).
3. Work Environment: The employee morale has been very low for quite some time now. Employees are not confident about the company nor its plans. There's still a lot of culture shock for many and a very Ikon vs. Ricoh attitude, to the point where employees don't want to work to together and share information for the "fear" of losing their job. In addition, the company and upper level management as whole don't really do much to help boost the morale within the company. Not sure if it's in the company's plan to be the #1 place to work--if so it's failing miserably in this department.
4. Positioning in the Marketplace: The company has been trying to position themselves as a "technology" company for quite some time, but their strategies are old school and still represent "pushing boxes" mentality. Even down to their marketing strategies are dated. For instance, they JUST got up to par on social media as a form of marketing strategy by starting a FB and Twitter page--hopefully they'll realize that there are many more forms out there.
