Communication is good ... in the 11th hour!
Pros
The benefits are good, the people that I work with are very intelligent and truly care about delivering a great product to the end users, and my direct managers were on the spot with what they could share and that they did know.
Cons
Mid-level management (I consider my direct managers to be low-level, since they truly have no power other than guidance of product and employee reviews) and higher are not in touch with the day-to-day activities of the employees under them. Most of the decisions are made at such a distance that the impact they have on the workers does not resonate loud enough. The workers that deliver the products that give customers high hopes for future products and upgrades are thought of as interchangeable pieces. Pieces that can be replaced and moved for the bottom line of saving a few bucks here and there. All of the knowledge that has been gained and then entered into making a product that is something that customers can actually appreciate and want to have in there hospital rooms is merely thought of as data that can be off-loaded to another individual; at a lower cost or because that person lives in the area of consolidation. Planning ahead means approving a position requisition to hire someone in a location that management knows will be closed and relocated even though they have not informed the location yet. The belief of people at that location is that they have a few years before the impending closure that they know will happen. This is conveyed to the new hire and is agreeable. However, less than two months after the new hire is brought in (passing on other offers that he had) the order to shutter the facility and relocate to another facility a 1000 miles away comes in. On top of that, nothing is in place for relocation packages that should have been made, nothing is in place for handling transitions, and no clear picture of the future is relayed. This shows how well the system that is in place works.