Q&A With HollyFrontier Corporation Employees

The engineering department is casual; however, long hours might be required during special projects. The down time for a refinery or down stream production is very costly so ever effort is required to return to operational status. An unscheduled lost day can cost a million or more in lost sales.

Generally work hours are 8 to 9 per day but in special projects and field engineering, the hours can exceed 12 per day. Down time is very expensive to a petroleum company so long hours might be required.

Moderate. Some high specialty jobs have less opportunities to change departments.

I have known many people to switch to related and unrelated positions within the company. This may not be as common today as it was in the past since the company is much larger than before.

Holly Energy Partners is structured to conform with tax laws that promote growth.

HF has a specialized position since it has most of it's business where many competitors are not very strong. As a result it has grown and prospered. I am not aware of any problem areas for the corporation.

Improve information and feedback from management.

HF has been making significant improvements in many areas; however, I feel that the management should consider more of the employee's ideas that might be counter to the management before making some decisions. Some of the managers only accepted suggestions that were already known to be liked by the managers. I know of one specific plan that management did not like. The fight was long and hard to convince the VP as to the merits of a different choice. The plan was eventually accepted and saved the company millions of dollars and potential down time.

Supportive.

The CEO seems to do a good job managing the company and promoting growth. The company has maintained a profitable position with better than average returns for investments.

Varies with position.

Employees who did not generally travel among the various locations generally had a good work/ personal balance. Those who worked in specialized engineering, programming and field service positions might spend significant time away from their family and sometimes work very long hours seven days a week.

HollyFrontier has locations in many states from the Central US, Southwest and West.

HollyFrontier has refinery positions at multiple refineries. Terminal and pipeline employees work in many different locations throughout the Southwest, West and Northwest. Some specialized employees spent half or more of their time traveling throughout the company locations.

Holly had a better vacation policy than Frontier and was grandfathered after the merger. I would expect the current policy to be still very good and liberal.

The vacation policy was very good for Holly employees before the merger with Frontier. Senior employees would receive five weeks. Frontier employees had a less generous vacation package and since the merged CEO came from Frontier, the vacation packages for newer employees have been reduced.

Usually performance related but I have seen too many which might have been related to friends and telling the managers what the managers wanted instead of what they needed.

Promotions did not have any pattern. Some seemed to go to friends, some to those who really deserved them. One junior engineer was promoted above skilled senior engineers while still in training. The promoting manager stated that you do not have to know how to perform the job to manage people working in the positions he would manage.

Friendly and good.

I enjoyed the travel and the freedom to make important decisions.

Varies with department and position.

I was not involved in many outings other than the annual Christmas party due to high level of travel.

Freedom to design automation solutions and program systems.

Generally secure. There were a higher than average loss after the merger of Holly and Frontier. I was an employee of Holly when the company only had 300 employees and continued while the company grew to be a Fortune 200 company.

Some positions restrict social life...especially if a high amount of travel is involved while others are very compatible with family life.

Knowledge of the petroleum industry and showing a desire to help HollyFrontier succeed.

Hardworking, dedicated, innovative, and those who can contain cost.

Not as well as it should be. Too many managers do not keep employees well informed until they feel a problem exist.

Enjoyable.

My position was challenging and enjoyable...this could vary with positions.

Annual raises are common with performance reviews considered for the amount of the raise.

The pace can vary from relaxed and daily routine to very long hours and high pressure to complete a job. Down time is very expensive and every effort is expected to bring the equipment back to service.

I feel that I was well informed about the company before joining.

HollyFrontier is diverse and appeared to promote without discrimination.