production operator

operator

process engineer

maintenance technician

quality control lab technician

Novonesis

The work hours are wonderful. We work 4 10s and 8hr shifts on Fridays for overtime. Overtime is rare depending on your department so work/life balance is nice. Benefits are great, there’s free snacks, a really fancy free coffee machine, employee suggestion box; and plenty of vacation, PTO, and floating holidays to use. It’s light work in an AC controlled environment. 

Now let’s talk about the bad. HR is present, but non existent. Employees are allowed to sleep on the job. Documentation practices are absolutely horrendous. We’re purposely understaffed because we can’t keep a steady workflow. Why hire anyone if they’ll be short on work within 3 months, right? So then staff are typically doing the jobs of 2, 3, 4 workers with no compensation whatsoever for going above and beyond. Operators are severely underpaid for the knowledge they’re required to have. We deserve to be compensated well for what’s in our brain. Just because physical demand is low it doesn’t mean we deserve low pay. This is unfair. I don’t recommend working here at all. 

The best parts are the people and amount of time off. 

Was hired to fill a new role they had created, where they basically wanted production operators to do maintenance as well. No maintenance work was ever given to me. The schedule for production operator work was terrible (most days had 2 days worth of work packed onto them). Management would not crack down on some of the temps who were having issues, so they would issue blanket rules that made it miserable for everyone. Management would typically spend 90% of their day in meetings, and would never come out to see how things were going. There were a few coworkers (mostly anyone with an office) who were happy to spend their time looking for non-existent issues just so they could throw people under the bus to management, and then management would write people up without ANY investigation or talking as to what was really going on. I truly believe in the product we made, and maybe the rest of Novozymes is ok, but the Milwaukee site is TERRIBLY managed.

Great place with a lot of growth & potential. 

The pay for the office is competitive & the benefits have to be some of, if not the best in Wausau. 8% retirement match, HSA, FSA, free vision & very affordable health/dental. Cash incentives for staying healthy, up to $2000 plus per year with employee plus+spouse. Yearly bonus, options to pay for schooling, yearly goals for personal/professional growth, and lots of clubs to join such as the Diversity Council to Young Professionals.

They recently built a basketball court for employees to use on breaks or whenever. They provide food(yogurt, fruit, cheese, granola, water) plus 2 coffee machines with espresso, cappuccino & lattes all at no charge to employees. 

CH is out of Europe and they tend to treat employees better there. They are a global company and it shows. You can walk into one room and people are talking in English then overhear a meeting in Danish or people speaking Spanish in the hallways.  

The management team is sub-par borderlining gross negligence. They will tell you one thing and expect another. They will lie straight to your face. Definitely selective policy and saftey standard enforcement borderline discriminatory. It's unclear how or what you are to achieve or complete on a daily basis. When you get to work for a scheduled shift most of the times you are reassigned to work a different position AFTER the START of your shift. Data logging isn't even saved so when you record information from your shift it just gets thrown away at the end if the month. Definitely a waste of time and hinderance to work flow. There is NO team aspect of consideration of coworkers. Coworkers are allowed to walk all over you with little to no repercussions.

Few meaningful opportunities for employee development (promotions or additional responsibilities). Very high turnover of motivated or talented individuals--especially exceptional early to mid-career scientists. This is especially true in the United States.  Novozymes is beginning to adopt the (un)ethical practices of it's Alliance Partner: Monsanto.Thinking for yourself is not necessary (or desired by management): "drink the kool-aid" or you'll get marginalized (or fired). The managers hoard information from subordinates and micromanage even experienced MS and PhD level employees.

As an operator, the job itself and pay/benefits are not terrible. The shiftwork will destroy your health and mental wellbeing. You will work a rotating schedule of 12 hr shifts rotating days and nights. On top of this you will be expected to come in for mandatory training and work overtime on your days off, resulting often in constant switching back and forth between day and night within the same week. As an operator, you are lowest on the totem pole. You will be looked down on by other departments as being stupid and lazy, even though you are working the hardest and require a diverse skillset to deal with the many requirements of the position. You will also be the first to be blamed, even for things that are not remotely your fault. 

Everything all the reviews say about management is true...Terrible.  Slack employees not held accountable, its all about if they like you and not how hard you work!  They employee surveys for rating management and employee happiness is a joke.  The jobs are good, the pay is OK, advancement horrible.  Most of our higher management is foreign.  The lower management has a grade school philosophy of not wanting to hurt feelings so lets punish everyone for the misdeeds of a minor few.  They will not remove or move people no matter how much  they damage or destroy because that will hurt their feelings, other departments completely opposite.

What is the best part of working at the company?
That they make a product good for invirment.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Too much cross training. Have you do multiple multiple duties which makes for more mistakes. And if you don't comply and say yes to there demands they start a paper trail and find a reason to let you go. Like the work I did. But management  does not compasat or appreciate good workers. Very over staffed in management positions and under staffed in production roles.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Clicky and take advantage of good employees. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Rewarding on the product we made.

A typical day work at Novozymes is: When you arrive at Novozymes, the first thing you do is to check yours e-mails,  in my special case after I do that I when to do my normal duties as star the dish washer machine organized the glassware room, collect the dirty glassware from the day before, prepare the paper work for shipping packages, sometimes introduces ;chemicals in the systems.  Novozymes is a good place to work they really care about you as individual, about you life balances and health, for me the hard part of the jobs was not to be able to communicate properly with my fellows, because my poor English. enjoyable part of the job friendly people always.  For me is best place I've worked.

Novozymes started out as a great place to work a few years ago.  However, with the downturn of the Ethanol Market, and several changes in the management structure, as well as the lack of patience of their Danish Senior management with the ebbs & flows of the industry,  Novozymes became a very unstable unfriendly environment.  There is such great potential within the organization, but poor management, and the overall low morale is not good for the overall company.  Very sad to watch the organization deteriorate as quickly as it has.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production operator 75 salaries reported	$21.16 per hour
Operator 24 salaries reported	$20.53 per hour
Process engineer 7 salaries reported	$86,330 per year
Maintenance technician 7 salaries reported	$32.86 per hour
Quality control lab technician 10 salaries reported	$25.00 per hour

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