ABB reviews

The new leadership is refreshing but the rank-and-file white collar work force still has a predominantly "not my job, not my problem" attitude. There is a deeply embedded culture of willful helplessness, and a tolerance for mediocrity There is an alarming lack of digitalization of internal work processes, and a lack of automation for even the most basic workflow tasks. Productivity and quality suffers due to multiple manual processes and disconnected systems. This is very disappointing, considering ABB's market reputation for leading-edge technology.

Over my time with ABB it seems that the United States, while nominally an important market is seeing increasing off-shoring of both manufacturing and managerial positions. Today, ABB announced that consideration of annual merit increases will be deferred until later -- perhaps at the end of Q2 (normally this is a March activity), but no firm statement that this is only a 3-4 month delay. At a time US unemployment is at a record low numbers and many companies -- particularly global entities -- are moving to repatriate jobs and give both bonuses and significant pay raises, ABB decides to NOT take care of its loyal employees. Instead they spend $2.6 billion to buy a failing division (GE Industrial) from a competitor that knew it's days were numbered.