district sales manager

regional sales manager

packer

territory sales manager

production associate

The Toro Company

After almost 20 years I was recently laid off from Toro after it's acquisition of CMW.  You would think that I would be very negative about Toro because of that, but I'm not.  I still think it's a great place to work and would go back in a heartbeat if I could.

One thing to differentiate between these reviews are the ones from the office workers vs the manufacturing plants.  While the corporate culture is great, it seems at the manufacturing level sometimes there are breakdowns in oversight that allows bad apples in supervisory positions.

Was everyone at the corporate office perfect?  No, but after almost 20 years I only had one bad manager in that whole time, (he jumped ship with less than one year there).  There were some very poor managers who most of us peons couldn't understand how they kept their jobs, but none of them were the abusive types, just borderline incompetent.

Pros:
Great culture - Easy going with awesome support for community activities, work/family balance, and more.
Adequate pay/benefits - while everyone thinks they should get paid more, it was probably on par for most manufacturing companies.
Summer hours - from Memorial Day through Labor Day you have the option to work 10 hours each Mon-Thur, and then 4 on Fri and be gone by noon.  That was great.
Casual environment - wear jeans and a flannel shirt to the corporate office.  Not enough companies in the world like that.
Work from home - While not an official policy, there were many managers who were okay with you working from home.  I did it many times during bad weather or when I had a bad cold.
Work there forever - I thought I would work there until retirement, (unfortunately not).  Every week an email would come out with work anniversary dates on it.  It was a regular thing to see people with 40+ years at the company.
Friendly executives - you can stop the CEO in the hallway and have a conversation with him.  This was true for the last 3 CEO's, and I still got congratulatory emails from the previous 2 on my work anniversaries, (and I was about as Peon as you got at the corporate office).

Cons:
Old school company that doesn't react quickly to change, especially not in the IT space.  Very poor IT budget that meant legacy systems that should have been retired MANY years earlier.

Internal advancement is slow - After 20 years I still had the exact same job title as when I started, (not that I cared that much).  If you are the type who wants to work your way up the line to management quickly then this is probably not the place for you.  It wasn't until I got laid off that I wished I would have fought for a Lead, or Senior type title while I was there.  Job hunting with that as my title would be easier now.

The culture is slowly changing from a mid-sized company to a big corporation.  Due to all of the acquisitions it needs to change, but unfortunately not all aspects of that change are good for the culture.

I was part of a mass lay off at the Tomah, WI plant.  I got a letter that said if we weren't back to work by April 24th of 2010 we were done. When I went in on April 20th to reapply I heard them calling people back to work. I was second in line on the call back list, but they called people from the bottom of the call back list to start after April 24th. Thanks for screwing us out of a job.. Oh and when the President of the United States declared us a National Disaster Area after the massive flooding in our area in 2008 Toro gave everyone that missed work an incident, which is a blemish on your work record. Kinda hard to get to work when the roads are closed by the Sheriff's Department due to flooding. My boss was so stupid she wanted to know if you really need a frame in order to build a unit. I told her we could put the parts in a box and put a sticker on the box saying "Some assembly required'.  Then she wanted to know if parts get painted before or after they're welded. She had no clue as to who the people were that worked on her lines. I have no clue as to how she was a line supervisor. I was told I should go to school to take the Supervisory Management class. Since I didn't get called back after the lay off I was left with student loans. Thanks so much Toro. Oh and I do apply for the Supervisors jobs as they come up to which I get the "Thanks, but no thanks" letters.  I hear Toro in CA is a great place to work, but Toro in Tomah, WI sucks..  At one of the last line meetings before we got laid off one of the women asked if we would be going back to the line we came off from since she had to make babysitting arrangement  for a 10 hour work day.  Jim (The Big Boss) told her that she was welcome to not come back to work if she felt that way.. Wow she tried to make a balance from her kids so she could work and that's the thanks Toro gave to her.

This is one of the best employment experiences I've had. People are there to do excellent work and encourage your excellence as well. My department was very flexible with personal time, start-stop times and break times. Come in when you say you'll be there, work hard and accomplish the business goals of your department and get out of there and back to your real life.

Company incentivizes professional education and volunteerism and facilitates cross-departmental transfers—a woman working in accounting was getting her degree in technical writing and was allowed to intern with the Technical Publications Dept.

The hardest part of the job was working with the engineering dept's information systems. (Yes, plural.) There were several database systems that were interconnected and overlapping and you just had to learn what to find where. The approach was to implement incrementally, which is not a bad approach at all, but things did not seem to be taken the final step and polished into an integrated whole. It was a bunch of cobbled together scripts, databases, and basic UI design. However, at the end of the day, it got the job done and I couldn't do half as well.

I recommend this employer highly.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Safety was always a high priority working there. They truly were interested building a culturally diverse workplace. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
It was the fact that we were always shorthanded on most shifts. We had to overlap into many if not all areas of the plant. When we were busy, and we were it could be stressful trying to keep pace most nights. That could lead to safety issues and concerns.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
I liked it that it was represented by many cultures that really could and did work together. You were able to hear there stories from around the world.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Meet prior to shift with supervisors on what was most important each shift for production then finding out who would be missing that shift and I would move people around or delegate and move them around to cover all areas of the plant. Production was always first & foremost as expected.

They provide absolutely no help in HR department, expect you to do it all on a phone app, zero dynamic explanations available.  No useful IT help, IT is based 2000 miles away in AZ, after all requests go thru MN.  It is a total help yourself or go with out environment.  Management is hyper-critical of anything that is not done "their way" and they take away anything they deem unnecessary no matter how useful it is to the working people.  Unaccepting of other opinions or ideas, its my way or the highway for them.  They offer little to no advancement education opportunities.  They do expect people to work however, which IS a good attribute, because it ensures that everyone does their share, (as long as your area's supervisor does his/her job) .  No chance for overtime most of the time, they are adding people to prevent any OT availability.  (could be a plus or a minus depending your preferences though)

Easy to get hurt, and they never made it more than two months without an OSHA reportable accident because it's just that stressful on your body. Hard to tell if management cares about just making money or is considering things from a utilitarian perspective, but either way you can't expect to feel like you're a valued employee as an individual regardless of the effort you put in. (12 hours a day, no less than 2-3 days a week) Every mistake is like committing a crime against the crown, and you don't even have to screw up if you happen to rub the wrong people the wrong way, because liars are rewarded. Politcal nightmare, restrcitve to the point of near slavery, and dangerously exhausting. It's very hard to conclude who is friend or foe, and easier to assume that if you don't precisely fit the criteria of only 3 different positions, you will have no place there.

I have a love-hate relationship with Toro... It is so hard to explain here, but while I have to recognize they do have pretty good benefits, I'm also afraid you can only enjoy them once you stop being an agency employee (intermediary) and become a Toro employee, and that can last forever, I saw both things happening, new employees coming and being converted to Toro employees in a couple months and employees performing critical duties, administrative duties, engineers, etc. lasting years and years and they were not Toro employees, they worked for an agency and had to hear the same excuse over and over again, "we're afraid that your role is not approved to be a Toro position for now, only an agency one, sorry". I got my salary raise once I turned a year with the company, but... never managed to become a Toro employee no matter how hard I tried, I decided to join the several people that was leaving the company at the time looking for a better opportunity.

Overall a decent place to work if you are fine with staying put. Competitive time off and benefits. Advancing within the company is difficult. Open positions in other departments are never answered when you apply or even an acknowledgement they've received your application. Many open positions go unfilled for months, only to go to outside people that require many months of training on the basics and take a long time to become "productive" and self-sustaining. Unfortunately pay hasn't kept up with cost of living and many are currently underpaid with no improvement in sight. (even with year after year of record growth and profits) These views are shared with many great co-workers but none feel empowered to address the situation with management across multiple departments.

Working at iron mountain facility you are forced to do 6 months of flex force (just a pay check no benefits at all). If you don’t get laid off which happens a lot you have to go through another 6 months of probation for union. You get 3 paid breaks which is a positive and they don’t force you to work a lot of hours. The work environment is extremely depressing at stressful your always being watched and do the same thing everyday. Not aloud to have music or anything like that at all. Most of management has no idea how to do any jobs but just read checklists creates a lot of questioning and aggravated employees. Micromanaging is very present there and can be stressful as your supervisor is always breathing down your back. Pay isn’t the greatest either. Overall not worst place I’ve ever worked but something needs to be changed about management.

This company is ran by ruthless tyrants that micromanage everything. It doesn't matter how good you are, they will use you up like a disposable lighter, and replace you. They make it clear how high the failure rate is when you enter their mulligan classes in the beginning. Out of 20 people hired, only 2 will be left after a year. The people who have been there 20-30 years express how badly things have gone down the toilet. The employees that survive there have learned to be cutthroat, and nasty to each other, because that's what it takes. Good benefits, decent pay, ridiculous hours and schedule= misery, despair, no life.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
District sales manager 47 salaries reported	$110,457 per year
Regional sales manager 22 salaries reported	$55.28 per hour
Packer 19 salaries reported	$26.83 per hour
Territory sales manager 10 salaries reported	$102,500 per year
Production associate 9 salaries reported	$25.50 per hour

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