Ah where do I start… Firstly, ADM is a VERY old fashioned company. They use antiquated technology (legitimately from the 80s and 90s) and a myriad of hard to use systems that have no interconnection. This antiquatedness also reflects in their business practices, in-office policy and general management.
Their most egregious fault in this day and age is their in-office policy. Pre-COVID, they required employees be in the office everyday and that they must be local to Erlanger, KY or Decatur, IL. During COVID, everyone was hybrid and the company hired 100% remote workers who did not have to relocate. The hybrid (which was mostly remote, people were not forced to be in the office) lasted until January 2024 when, with no warning, they forced everyone who lived local to be back in the office 5x a week with no option to work remote any days unless you’re sick or out of office. Meanwhile, all the employees hired remote during COVID are still allowed to be remote with no relocation plans or forced in office. Remote employees on our team were talking about being in different countries and away from home on vacation working while all of us are sitting in the office 5 days a week. It’s insulting.
And let’s be honest - anyone who is not local to those areas is likely not going to relocate here. They already had a hard time hiring during COVID and now they legitimately can‘t find anyone with the forced relocation and in-office policy and there are hundreds of open positions (legitimately - search their job website, indeed, etc.) This has been exacerbated by people leaving in droves due to disastrous global project management + the reinstated in-office policy. Due to this, there is even more pressure on the good employees while the bad employees continue to coast with little to no consequence as the company is desperate to keep anyone they can and physically cannot replace them even if they wanted to.
There have been employees reported to HR for having multiple jobs, harassing other employees, not doing their jobs etc. and HR will not do anything.
If you do happen to be a good employee and want to get promoted or a raise - good luck. The higher up positions are almost always hired externally and internal candidates are passed over (and every internal person eligible applies for the job.) Raises are dismal and across the board for everyone, even the bad employees. People who are hired in end up making more than people with the same levels of experience at ADM because ADM is only willing to impress and rope in external talent and not reward their loyal employees. The only real success I’ve seen with people receiving promotions are when they completely switch departments and have to learn a new job and receive a new team entirely.
The only people I’ve seen who have success here long term are people who are willing to be beat down by ADM’s rigidity and not question leadership/policies while taking on bad people’s work and working crazy hours to hopefully be in the right time and place for the limited amount of promotions.
My advice - run. A majority of people hired in the last year are bottom of the barrel due to the hiring issues and they’ve started advertising work visas with every position to attract international talent since they’ve had no success with people stateside.
