Workplace reviews and discussion: 台灣日立化成國際股份有限公司

Travel allowance / Convenient transportation

The company is now named “Resonac International,” formerly Showa Denko Trading, and before that Hitachi Chemical International. It has used three names in less than four years. Every time the company changes its name, assistants and sales staff have to handle many changes with clients, which is very troublesome. In addition, the company spent a lot of money on the acquisition, so it now keeps very tight control over expenses. Business-related costs, such as shipping and receiving expenses, and even overtime pay, are subject to “special scrutiny,” so some people do not dare report overtime even when they work it. Moreover, industry-wide performance was poor from the end of last year through this year. Some reviews said the year-end bonus was high, but judging from the current situation, it now seems merely average.

I also strongly agree with the previous comments: you really need to choose your department carefully. The overtime and workplace bullying mentioned there are real. Without going into details, the “Semiconductor Department” alone had 8 or 9 people resign or apply for transfers during the first few months of this year. As far as I know, most of them left because of the manager. The entire department has only around 20 people, yet nearly half of them fled within a short period. The seriousness of the department’s problems should be clear without saying much more.

Aside from the manager, this department has a long-standing culture of regular overtime. At the beginning of each month, sales staff may have to work on their figures until midnight. Assistants also handle a wide range of tasks. To put it positively, you can learn many things, but in reality, what you learn is not really any professional skill; someone else could do the same work just as well. In addition, although assistants are ostensibly in assistant positions, they are often treated as scapegoats. Rational clients are manageable, but with unreasonable clients, you constantly have to soothe and check in with them by phone. If a mistake is accidentally made, the female manager’s first response is to magnify the problem and assign blame rather than solve it. Dealing with this is extremely exhausting and a waste of time.

The above describes the problems in the Semiconductor Department. Even if the manager is replaced in the future, habits and the overall culture are difficult to change. The overtime problem has always existed; if it could have been changed, it would have been changed long ago. So anyone considering joining Resonac International should really think twice, choose their department carefully, and choose their manager carefully.