Vantaggi
Klein Tools has a phenomenal reputation, and I was beyond excited to work there and be associated with such an awesome brand. However, after being there, all I can say is Mathias Klein would be appalled and disappointed in how the Human Resources department as a whole is run at this company, because they are running the reputation into the ground. I’ve never witnessed anything so unprofessional, and the Kleins need to fix this problem urgently if they want their brand protected.
Svantaggi
I don’t even know where to start. I can’t stress enough that I was so excited to work at Klein and to have my job. I’m passionate about what I do, and I take my work incredibly seriously. When I arrived at Klein, I was warmly welcomed in my first week, but I believe this is all a facade within the Human Resources department as a whole. I quickly realized what day-to-day life would be like, but I embraced it, despite the little training I had. I was thrown into my job, but learned quickly. I even received praise early on for how quickly I picked up and how well I was doing. There is a concerning high turnover within the TA department, so I ended up having job duties that really weren’t mine to begin with (and I was not being compensated for that in any way for picking up the pieces). I was proud of myself for handling this the way I did. I helped train new people, I embraced the change, and always offered to help anywhere I could. I don’t want to be too specific, but I was terminated for reasons that I still do not know. I received little to no feedback, and any feedback I got was really positive. I even received remarks like, “When are you going to be promoted - you’re doing ___ job already!” from upper employees in the company. I had phenomenal relationships with hiring managers across departments at Klein, and I gained their trust throughout my time there. The leadership in the TA department is unprofessional, chaotic, and immature. Their chaos is contagious, and we all felt it day to day - there is such a lack of stability. I received feedback from this said leadership early on that I will not go into detail about, but I will say it was about me personally, and about things that shouldn’t even be discussed in the workplace. There were things said that made me feel physically insecure. Things that couldn't be justified and that had no evidentiary support. From then on, I knew that this person did not like me personally, and I had a bad feeling that there would be nothing I could do to fix it. Ironically, many people who have come and gone from this department (and HR as a whole) have had very similar experiences, so I’m not alone here. There was a saying that went around often that this leadership “would find a way to get rid of you” if you weren’t liked… They hit the nail on the head. Good leadership values communication, genuine feedback, and initiative; the leadership in the TA department just wants control. You will be stunted professionally working for this person (and HR as a whole) at Klein. The Predictive Index Assessments are an absolute joke, and I was made to feel like I essentially got the wrong results (and thus, my personality was not right for the team). This was another aspect of our day-to-day lives at Klein that made me feel terrible about myself (again, I was not the only person who felt this way). HR tries to frame PI like it isn’t a personality test… IT IS! It just simply is. They want to separate and divide employees, and it’s essentially a ranking system about what type of person you are. Take it from someone who literally worked in the HR department. Why can’t we just be adults and work together like normal people? General HR is incredibly unprofessional, and my termination call was one of the most immature things I’ve experienced in the corporate workplace. I was interrupted consistently, told I could ask questions (but not really), and was treated as if I never mattered. I have yet to get a reason as to why I was fired. In fact, leadership in my department was requesting multiple things of me all morning, up until my termination call, which really isn’t consistent with an employee who is performing so badly that they deserve termination. To be frank, if these HR Generalists worked at other companies, they’d be terminated themselves. It’s embarrassing to have these types of people who are immature, clique-y, and rude working in such an important department. It felt like I was in high school again, to be honest. The last thing I will say about HR is that they said I was not allowed back on-site to get my things - they would ship them to me. Well, one of my personal belongings was missing. When I corresponded with HR about this over email, they said this belonging was not at my desk (and that I was wrong). So, I’ll probably never get that back and will not be reimbursed for it. My experience at Klein was a nightmare. I loved my actual job, but the people there are only out for themselves. If you want a genuine culture, collaboration, and leadership that truly cares about your well-being, Klein is NOT the place for you. Please know that I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I encourage anyone reading this to really go through these reviews. You deserve to be valued, and Klein will not do that for you. Turnover (and statistics) do not lie. To those of you at Klein reading this, you know who you are. Shame on you for treating so many good, hardworking, valuable employees so terribly.