Miss Earl Bakken and Bill George! - Regulatory/Quality/Compliance Medtronic Employee Review

Layoffs every year @ fiscal year end (Apr 30). TENSE for months, preceding. ("Who/what BU/Dept will get hit this year?") MANY "contingent" worker trend. How can this be? Working among lots and lots of contingent workers makes full-time-with-benefits staff nervous. Constant feeling of competitiveness, which is probably on purpose. Automatic/low annual empl. raise Budget Plan had not allowed me to keep pace with inflation or offer a chance to "get ahead" with bills and savings. Just got worse over time and the already low auto "raise" went even further down recently. Scary. Maybe due to the merge with Covidien and "overlap culling." Constant change: software, people, organization, process, location... can interfere with actual 'work.' Lots of daily non-work "INcoming." Must report "hours worked" each week so working smarter not longer not well reflected; appeared risky to log less than or around 40 hrs. Especially with contingent workers so ready to log many hours (for which they are paid OT). Co. empl. Benefits were steadily eroded over my tenure. E.g., Co. contribution percentage to 410(k) for new vs. former empl. Allowed time off shaved down. Etc. Advancement opps can be limited. Hard working empl. can be typecast and stuck. Who you know, can really matter. Who likes you, can really matter. Favoritism if/when allowed to foster is palpable. Work/home-life balance difficult due to tsunami of non-work 'incoming.' Any software interruptions directly and negatively impact empl. work/home life balance. Felt the weight of every software interruption on shoulders with no ability to predict or control software functionality outcomes. Management quality/ability feels uneven. Can be an issue for empl. moving around who might have come to expect a management "norm." Onerous: annual perf. goals, annual behavior characteristic demonstrations, annual development goals... Work (goal) success can be offset by low behavioral score which is arbitrary. You can "achieve" but at raise time, have your hard work achievement offset by a low behavioral score which can induce lots of anxiety for several glaringly obvious reasons. Support for training and education was reduced for the majority over time. As an employee, felt bottom of the barrel after stockholders, customers, clients, suppliers... ANYone else actually. Felt "lucky" to keep job after each year's layoff. Rewards for hard-working staff achieving milestones was often 'ice cream treats.' HR appeared more and more outsourced and unavailable. Not uncommon perhaps but felt HR was there to support management. Felt repercussion of a situation not of my making... but "blame happens." NG. As top management changed over the years, so did the good times and feelings.