Such a disappointment
Pros
Good salary and benefits package. The management cars benefit is great, although prices are creeping up. A capable bunch of people, everyone at an operational level are approachable and helpful. Huge investment and commitment from Tata.
Cons
A bureaucratic nightmare where even the most basic task takes months to deliver. Extremely poor delivery of IT projects. You bump into people who have joined from other companies and we all share the same look of disbelief at how thing ‘work’ in JLR. No collaboration and extreme silo working. You will stumble upon someone sat 10 feet from you trying to achieve the same thing but as part of a completely different project. The money wasted due to this duplication of effort is massive. Root-cause is no effective medium or long term strategy and a lack of objective alignment across departments. Senior managers don’t seem to talk to one-another. The standard response to increasing workload is to hire more people, rather than a desire to challenge ways of working and improve processes (i.e. do more with the same resources). This has added scores more people all struggling with outdated and wasteful systems and processes. Very hierarchical, with far too many layers of management. Some very poor management behaviours (1950’s-style attitudes). HR led ‘Smarter Working’ implemented but no evidence of buy-in or progressive approach from managers, so it has effectively become a desk-reduction strategy. Get used to working in the corridor. Note that this is my experience of Marketing, Sales and Service area, with close collaboration with IT. Some other parts of JLR are clearly getting things right.