assembler

technician

electrician

material handler

maintenance technician

Generac Power Systems

The job itself is not that hard when it comes to picking and packing, the load can get stressful during the peak season but that mostly comes from the high turnover, the problem comes from upper management. There is a massive disconnect between them and the people who actually have to do the work.

For instance at Janesville the service department is constantly getting the short end of the stick just because we don't bring in the big money like finished goods does, our area is constantly getting smaller to the point we literally have no more room for products and are forced to stack them in  unsafe ways or put them on badly maintained storage trailers where they get damaged.

You would be very hard pressed to find a worker out on the floor that is genuinely happy working there and most of the long time employees are all at there breaking points.

They constantly tells us how they want to make the work life balance better for us and then turn around and cut the amount of attendance points from 12 to 6 that you have to wait a full year to drop off. And the two days of PTO they gave us may as well just be called extra vacation time as if you don't put it in 48 hours in advance you still get docked a point.

If you want to learn anything past the area you started in you have to constantly bug the middle management about it for weeks or months before they will even attempt to cross train you in other areas.

For me it's frustrating because I like doing whatever job I'm doing as best I can and it's hard to want to keep working that hard when it appears you mean nothing to upper management and when other workers can get away with the minimum (if even that, and alot of them intentionally will only hit rate and then slow down and start talking for half an hour so more isn't expected of them)

And having to constantly train new people on the outdated, inefficient system and processes we have just for them to realize how bad it is here and quit after a week. And I can't really blame them, it's a struggle some days to even want to go to work because of how depressing the place is. 

All that being said, I'd love if this place could get it together and get there priorities straight. And they should start with addressing the things that make there workers miserable, forget about the money and the growth and try to rebuild a strong foundation again that will make the thoes easier to do in the long run, and because at this rate it's just going to end up being a big hollow shell of a company, if it even continues. 


I worked there for almost 3 years at 2 of the locations. First location was great. Loved my manager and the team was fantastic. Great group to lead.  Work  load was crazy. I started there just as Covid hit. Hurricanes make the job hours very long and working 6 to 7 days a week. I was ok with it for the short time. Moved to another location because Generac decided to combine warehouses. At the other location I liked the work and the people that worked on the floor. Great team! Upper management was not up to speed for the day to day activities and what it took to get the work load done. The production schedule changed by the hour or less. Upper management didn't support their supervisors. In my short time there the pay went up 4 times for the production workforce. Nothing for the supervisors and more and more work was given out. Longer hours and extra days at straight time.  When I interviewed at Generac I shared my concern that was out in the general public that Generac will run their workers to the breaking point and then kick them to the street it they are not able to keep up. The craziness that is created there is by the lack of understanding what it happening on the production floor. I belonged to a solid team. You could see it coming for 6 months that the workload was slowing down. Lines going away. Zero communication from the management team as to what direction Generac was heading. Rumors coming in daily that the plant was closing from other Generac locations. Let alone the Corporate office was still hiring Senior Leadership and VP's. The culture at Generac was and is terrible. They say they want feedback and hold communities and circle groups. you give them feedback and it just stops. Generac is very good at starting something and never ever flowing through. 
Again if you need a job for a short time this is the place. They will hire anyone. But be prepared to get beat down. Take the job but keep looking there are better jobs out there than working here. 

I was hired as a temp answering phones to get customers' generators activated, and it was explained that we would also help out with troubleshooting for home standby and portable generators for virtually any company. I received two and a half days of training, the first full day was for the Activation role, and the rest of training was for portable generator troubleshooting training. I did not receive training for home standby units, and barely any for portables, before being forced to answer those calls from customers who were in hurricanes begging for help. They knew more than I did, and we both soon knew it! The company knew this as well but their hold times were so long that they were willing to throw anybody onto the phones without knowing anything - my trainer admitted as much.

Then, once I started answering phones, they told us that we would be working through our lunch breaks - which is against my temp agency's policy - but they would cater for us. "Cater" meant Domino's one day, KFC the next day, and Taco Bell the day after that, and there was no time to eat because we were only allowed 5-minute breaks. I managed two tacos during my 8.5 hour shift. At the end of the days I had headaches from hunger, staring at a computer screen, and being on the phone for 8+ hours straight.

We also received an email from our supervisor instructing us that we could not use our cellphones during our work shift, but if we needed to make a call, to talk to her. Since we didn't get breaks or lunches, we couldn't check for messages or emails for the entire day.

My co-workers were friendly and helped as well as they could considering they were on the phone as well for 8 hours straight.

I have no idea about things such as benefits, I was only a temp. I barely had time to look around the room much less take time to learn about the new place I was working.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Working remote. The building atmosphere in Waukesha is awesome! You feel like you’re part of something important. The Pewaukee building is like The Hotel California and Death Island had a baby. It’s terrible.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Consumer Sales is a Call Center. There are no “sales” aspects of the position. You WILL NOT become good at sales from this position. You’re reading from a script. Absolutely the most Micromanaged Department in Generac. Your phone time is heavily monitored. Management is pathetic at best. People are more concerned about their LinkedIn image than making the department better. Beware of “Jennerwreck”. Use the position as a resume builder.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Not good. They should tell you ahead of time this department - Consumer Sales - is a Call Center. Promotions / advancement are based on a “ Participation Trophy” mentality. Generac as a whole is suffering because of this. It’s a case of the untalented/under qualified outnumbering the talented, and slowly-but-surely the talented can’t make-up for untalented anymore. The sad thing is because of poor management, this place hemorrhages talented people. In Consumer Sales their concept of making things better and more efficient is equivalent to “making the wheel rounder.” 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
In Consumer Sales - which IS a Call Center where you learning nothing about sales or get better at the craft of selling - you are on the phone reading from a script for conservatively 90% of your day. Problems that you do solve are Warranty issues. If you think outside the box or make suggestions, it falls on deaf ears.

A typical day at work involves managing customer accounts, listening to customer complaints, and keeping customers informed about company products.

I've learned mostly about generators and how they work, as well as how to dealer with unmanageable customers.

Management is good at this job. If you are treated unfairly by a customer, management will take care of you. 

Co-workers at Generac are like team members. You work together to answer questions and to get job tasks completed. You will never find yourself working alone on any project, and you will always find help from your co-workers in times of crises.

The hardest part of the job would be trying to make pointless conversation with customers to keep a 50% call time. I believe that if you are doing quality work at your job, keeping your sales up, and thoroughly answering customer's questions, then keeping a 50% call time is not the ultimate goal and is pointless. I do a fantastic job at answering customer's questions, and getting done what I need to get done, but when it comes to the 50% call time I never hit it because I'm terrible at asking "How is the weather where you are today?," "How is your business going," "How is life?" 

The second hardest part of the job is that, with this particular position, all other departments dump their work on you. You're basically the garbage disposal for pointless work. Management is working on improving this issue, but it is still an issue nonetheless.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the benefits. You receive some of the best benefits you will find at a job with health, vision, and dental.

I hated this job, there were people literally smoking up the parking lot every break, including managment at the time. (from what i heard he went up in the company... ironic) 1 supervisor cared, the other one was only if you were attractive if you werent good luck getting anything from him. after 90 days i was told the person who was supposed to be hiring me was gone on vacation for you guessed it 90 days... in this 90 days i learned the entire line btw, all the ones i could work at entry level. even substituting my time and rotating the line out for people who needed to go to company meetings (about insurance if i remember correctly). after about another 60 days  i hurt myself on the job here where they shunned me for coming back and for leaving for being injured. transfered me to another department (where my wage was supposed to go up and i found out later wasnt). i quit cause i had enough. then i went to go back to this hellhole of a building cause i need the money (13 of 14 days mandatory when i left btw and overtime every single one of them.. 2 months (ish) so i said i need the money. nope i get there through the whole application process start training, the day of i get a call " your not eligible for rehire"... okay fine then thanks for the waste of time, only to continue to get calls WHERE I TELL THEM WHAT HAPPENS AND THEY CONTINUE TO CALL ME. this place is s.h.i.t.., it f.u.c..k.e.d. me over, and for the love of god never work here. they dont care about you, they want to work you to the bone and bend you over when you cant move. i worked for 12.50 this wasnt worth 20.

I was a press brake operator here for around 6 months. I've had a few different jobs in a variety of different manufacturing positions so my previous experience on working for different employers is pretty high. I would not recommend this company to anyone besides someone hard up for a job or is just trying to develop skills to move on to a better company. The compensation per hour was basically the only ok thing that they had going for them but that wasn't even that great. Management is some of the worst I've ever seen iny life, working conditions were decent but they set quotas and effectivity rates that are nearly impossible to achieve. There's always people fighting and arguing with each other, the favoritism between supervisors and leads is so over the top that the leads can basically treat people under them however they want, take their bad moods on them, yell at newer employees for stuff they had never been suitably taught, then write the newer employee up for talking to the lead in the same exact manner that they were talking to you in. Everything's so disorganized there so basically every day is just a giant headache. There's honestly so many better places to work at than this place I wouldn't waste too much time trying to make a career out of here. I gave them a two only because I have worked at worse places but really it should be like a 1.5 stars but that's just how I feel.

This was not a good experience for me. In my interview one position was discussed, got offered a similar but different position,  then on my first day I was given the job I interviewed for. And the exact position was up in the air for my first 3 months. 

They used mostly interns and temps for our team. Staffing was bare bones so if someone was on vacation or quit, it caused chaos with all the extra work. I could not see a path for growth or advancement.

I had the feeling the person training me, who was a direct hire, was trained quickly and thrown into their position. Managers did not fully understand or support the tasks we performed so it felt as if we were on our own when faced with unique or one-off situations.  

My immediate teammates were friendly but other departments and associates were not. Asking clarification questions or rejection of a request/ticket sent to the team was met with condescension and anger by some associates and their managers.  It was as if a new hire should have the knowledge of a tenured employee. People in other areas tended to be unfriendly.  Saying hi when making eye contact with someone you pass in the hall was met with silence.

Morale seemed low. The icing on the cake from me was the employee survey.  70% of the department said they didn't expect to be working there in 2 years. This made me feel better about my decision to leave since I wasn't the only one that felt poorly about working there.

What they’ll tell you: great place to work, fair pay, great benefits, great work life balance. 

How it actually is: immature high school clicks, low pay, bunch of people standing around doing nothing while you work and they get paid the same as you, benefits are expensive and average at best (family of 3 is over $600 a month out of pocket for the premiums), will cut your hours at a moments notice while promising you full time. Walked in today after just completing my 8 week probationary period and got laid off. No notice. Was gracious enough to pay everyone for the full day I guess. Blamed it on the economy and ‘no one is buying generators because we don’t have any hurricanes’. The plant manager will tell you to go work for Bridgestone which is less than 10 minutes away if you don’t like it there. Completely unprofessional. Won’t fix the cnc machines and robot to actually make rotors and stators to meet production which tells me they don’t want to make any investments in the Trenton SC location because they’re not looking for it to be there long. Once the land lease is up say goodbye to Generac. Just like Urban outfitters, Samsung and multiple others places at that location. Word of advice to the people whos heads weren’t on the chopping block today, find another job. If you’re looking to work there,  don’t unless you have no skills, a record, or still live at mommy and daddy’s while having no real responsibilities or bills. 

I have been at Generac, Trenton SC, location for several months now. The management does not know what positive reinforcement is. ONLY NEGATIVE reinforcement is used and it is used often. Everyone doing no work and just watching makes the real money. The people breaking their backs and destroying their feet and hands make pennies on the dollar compared to the ones who literally DO NOTHING! They watch you like hawks ALL DAY LONG. You will be required to do the same thing at minimum 450 times a day and for several months on end. They don’t move you, you don’t learn if they don’t move you, you can’t move up if you don’t learn. The atmosphere is EXTREMELY NEGATIVE as everyone who’s spent ANY time there has had their souls crushed and feels beaten down. I watch people come and go like I’ve never seen before. Management DOES NOT care about their employees and how they feel or what they desire. You get 2 breaks in a 10 hour shift. A 15 min rest your feet break and a 20 min lunch break. THATS RIGHT, 20 MIN LUNCH BREAK! They force you to work 10hrs mandatory OT every Monday. They work on a point system. 9 points equals termination. THEY POINT YOU FOR EVERYTHING. Including talking on the line if it becomes “excessive”. I’m warning you…. Just keep looking. The decent-ish pay and the great co-workers mixed with a desire for manufacturing experience is the only thing keeping me. Pray for me! 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Assembler 35 salaries reported	$19.82 per hour
Technician 166 salaries reported	$27.50 per hour
Electrician 82 salaries reported	$30.43 per hour
Material handler 50 salaries reported	$22.12 per hour
Maintenance technician 22 salaries reported	$29.02 per hour

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