Please keep this email anonymous. I currently work for GM Holden in Australia. This is my second stint at Holden. As you may know Holden is an Iconic Australian brand that unfortunately has GM Cancer. Holden has always been successful in delivering pretty good rear wheel drive cars at good prices. Until, however we got caught up in the GM world with the GTO program. My first time at Holden was in 2000. It was a place were everybody was proud of what we did, knew what had to be done. Now it is a shell of its former self, with people totally beaten into submission. The last 18 months doing Camaro has really smashed Holden and its talented workforce. It replaced just about all of the Australian management with Americans with no experience in the Australian market, and could not be told they were wrong.
I spent my time between my Holden stints at Toyota. I learned a lot, and although I don’t get excited about there product they give everything 100% which gives them an excellent result. They also have what they call a pillar of there mission – Respect for people. GM however is as described by some of your recent articles. Its a mess! I have only ever tried to do what’s best, offering alternative ways of doing things, proposing a different mindset of doing it right once. This has lead now to nothing short of intimidation and harassment by my management.
Pushed into a dead end job, verballed continuously by my bully manager. So I decided to ask for a Voluntary Separation. REJECTED!!! Why, if I want to I go empty handed is the response! Such a shame that something Iconic and something to be proud of has turned into something shameful and embarrassing. The people within my organisation are begging we are sold off, but nobody will speak up as they know they will be harassed and would be fired or worse put into a job you will never get out of and can;t leave due to the rising unemployment rates. I cannot see how GM will survive, it can’t even deliver a employee Christmas party let alone products people actually want to buy. Unfortunately all GM has done to Holden is engineer the Holden out of it.
Yikes.
Well, I’m going to have to rethink my Camaro daydreams if the people building it are all pissed off and upset and hoping to get sold off. Doubt that helps make a good product.
Ahh yes, the joys and benefits of universal (mis)management.
Sad to hear about it from the inside, but hardly surprising. It always makes me want to give the roadshow idiot a little Curly-esque eye jab – just to check if they can see anything at all.
Different country, different work ethos, different product needs, different corporate culture.
‘Hey Bob, I’ve got a great idea. Round up some more of the overpaid nincompoops from the Tubes and head down to Oz. See in you can mismanage that into oblivion too.’
Holden’s mission has changed and it sounds as if the reader was shocked that, upon his/her return, the good old days were over. I would guess that the Australian market is well down on the list of the Camero’s market penetration priorities. However, it is a shame to hear of a tight, local shop being stretched out of shape in pursuit of much broader mission.
And whacking the Christmas party? Clueless Yanks indeed, who don’t appreciate the sanctity of the Aussie Christmas Party. I’ll bet the new mgt doesn’t let the staff down tools twice a day for the cafe break anymore, either. Why on earth would GM’s try to export their failed corporate culture to the land of OZ?
Sad… when I first moved to Oz (from the US), I was pretty impressed with the Holden’s there. I felt that GM could learn a thing or to to take back to Detroit. Sounds like GM got it backwards. They took the worst of Detroit and exported it to Oz.
No voluntary separation? Gotta have some leverage to ask for one of those. Or at least some perceived leverage, not to mention some good connections with Bank Paulson and his buddies.
All you can do is do what I did: do your job as well as you can, picking up all the skills and expertise that is available and looks good on a resume, and at the same time look outside the company for your next opportunity. You gotta man-up, even if your others are failing to do the same and often get rewarded anyway.
I lived in Australia in the 90’s and Holden was on the ropes then. Australia’s a country with a relatively small population (18 – 20 million) mostly on the coasts, and doesn’t have the road network or sales base for many autos, which cost far more there than they do in the USA.
Have you ever heard of a company in Europe called SAAB ?
Saab and Volvo were dependent on exports to survive. Where’s Holden’s export market?
Export markets, South Africa, UAE, USA, Pacific rim, Korea, Tasmania (sorry, kidding) New Zealand, UK
Holden have tried mightily to show GM North America how it’s done.
They’ve got the designs done, quality right up, excellent use of one RWD platform, some fantastic performance options but they suffer the very same incurable disease that afflicts anything with a GM badge on it: poor-to-terrible resale values.
My question is are Holden’s reliable? The distress sale prices on the Pontiac G8 are starting to look pretty good.
capdeblu: I’m from Australia and can say, yes they’re reliable. You could try searching for “Buying a used Commodore, things to watch out for”.
http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?articleID=22439
Hope that helps.
@PeteMoran As a fellow Aussie, I wouldn’t say Commodores are as reliable as we’d like to think they are.
As a manufacturer, Holden ranks low in the customer satisfaction survey:
http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=49083&vf=1
Like it’s American counterparts, the VE Commodore is a thirsty, lumbering dinosaur (especially with the 4sp auto box) that needs a nip/tuck ASAP.
hughie522: Hello fellow Aussie. Following all this with amazement like me?
I should certainly have clarified what I wrote to our friend as I mainly meant mechanically reliable.