Working with Sandvik
For those in a hurry, we'll start with the conclusions.....
We've worked with just a part of the Sandvik group so far, therefore cannot claim to have a full perspective. What we can say from our own direct experiences is that, for such a huge and genuinely global organisation, the people we've met certainly feel like the company is 'theirs'. To us, this says something about the level of autonomy and responsibility at a local level.
We are not going to claim that Sandvik has got everything right already - which employer has? But having worked with over seven hundred organisations to date, we do recognise a good employer when we see one. From what we've seen so far, Sandvik is a company that's going somewhere and going about it in exactly the right way to build good employee and customer relationships.
If 'Go with a winner' motivates your employer choice, Sandvik could be for you. If an employer with a social conscience and a strong sense of fair play is important to you, this company sees these matters as one of the key cornerstones of its future success.
Verdict: "If you want to be part of a company that is growing significantly and creating opportunity at almost every level, now is a good time to get involved".
Sandvik is a global industrial group with a 140-year track record of developing advanced products and world leading positions. With a head-office based in Sandviken, Sweden, the group employs in the region of 42,000 people in 130 countries.
The group's business areas are: Tooling. Mining & Construction and Materials Technology making thousands of products varying from vital medical replacement parts for the human body, harsh environment specialist machines, to guitar strings.
The Sandvik corporate website will tell you all about the company's history, philosophies on doing business, global structure and product lines. It is packed with information and will give you a very good perspective on Sandvik as an organisation and is well worth a visit.
Our objective here is to drill down a little further than the corporate message; to provide you with independently gathered information, that covers the kind of day to day employee experiences that are directly relevant to the career decision you are, potentially, about to make.....
The employee experience
In addition to what is detailed on this page, at the top of each individual employment opportunity page there are two links:-
'The Workplace' tells you all about the specific part of the Sandvik organisation that each opportunity relates to. (example)
'The Department' drills down to even more detail about where you'll actually be working, through the eyes of your prospective new colleagues. (example)
Opportunity
One of the things you will notice about each individual role carried by this portal, is that obvious consideration has been given to the specific opportunity that is associated with that particular role, in the particular circumstances that surrounds the hiring activity you will be involved in. In this section, though, we're covering the opportunities that become open to you by virtue becoming part of Sandvik in general.
We have a saying that opportunity, like beauty, is always in the eyes of the beholder. When considering this section, therefore, we have looked at Sandvik through the four primary recognised reasons that people leave and join companies (in no particular order of priority or preference):-
Big challenge / big reward
Go with a winner
Inspiring mission
Balance with life
From what we have seen in terms of actions, and heard from people already within the organisation, we believe that Sandvik manages to achieve the balance between being big enough to satisfy the most ambitious of career aspirations, whilst giving enough autonomy to the individual business units for employees to know that they have a say in how things are done. As it says in the corporate literature: All business is local.
OK, so let's not pretend that everything is perfect and there's some kind of utopia going on here, but our professional view is, for people who want to be a part of a global organisation, this is a great company to work for.
Here are our reasons:-
Sandvik aims to achieve number one status in every market it enters, on the basis of customers recognising Sandvik as their preferred first choice. Empty statement on its own, but this comes hand in hand with practices that demonstrate the appreciation that the ONLY way of achieving this 'mission' is by hiring, developing and retaining the kind of workforce, who create the products and deliver the kind of service that makes the customer feel this way.
In terms of life balance, many companies claim to have this as a priority, yet fail to actually implement it into day to day employee experience. With Sandvik we've seen tangible examples of the company demonstrating its appreciation that one of the key routes to team performance and retention is to set tangible social objectives and implement the policy of fair play.
Although too diverse to go into here, the corporate objectives of being preferred first choice offers the big challenges and inspiring missions at an employee level that are so motivational for some people. Again, this isn't empty talk; Sandvik is either already number one, or at least at number two heading for number one, in each market that it operates.
The sustained success of the company over a one hundred and forty year period demonstrates a clear ability to plan into the future and ride with the peaks and troughs of world economic climates. This kind of track record should provide prospective employees with a level of comfort in terms of employment security and stability
Research shows that demonstrating a strong social and environmental conscience is important to a lot of people when making career choices. To repeat, Sandvik has clear, definable objectives in these areas.
Rewards, like opportunity, are subjective. Whilst pay and conditions have not been a part of our specific remit, our general market research suggests that these are largely on a par with, and in some cases significantly above, market average. Where Sandvik scores highly is in the area of investment in employee welfare and facilities, R&D, scope for experiencing work in other countries, learning and development through training, mentoring, and sharing of expertise across the group.
Who fits in?
There is definitely a Sandvik way of doing things, which is clearly defined in what is termed "The Power of Sandvik". Because of the aforementioned sustained success of the company - and how that translates back to opportunity and stability for the workforce - to be fair, it's hard to argue against this.
Each plant, and each department of each plant, has it's own personality - which is why we have a special section on this within individual opportunity details. In terms of the kind of people who thrive in a Sandvik environment, again from the people we've met, there appears an unspoken understanding that 'if you work here, you're good at what you do - and you deliver'.
Anyone coming from a smaller organisational environment will need to get used to the fact that, those decisions which need to be taken at group level aren't going to happen in an instant. That's not to say that we've found Sandvik to be overtly bureaucratic, more of an acknowledgement that some decisions need to be made in consideration of the wider context that a company of this size operates.
The core values of the company are described as: Open Mind, Fair Play and Team Spirit. We can only call it as we see it and, from our own experiences of working with the company, that's what you get.