Accenture Reviews in Melbourne, Australia Area

Pros

Working with people of high caliber and capabilities. Experience in large projects.

Cons

Long hours and low remuneration.

Advice to Senior Management

Higher remuneration for employees.

Pros

Large company
Brand recognition
Easy to get hired into
Plenty of work available

Cons

No work life balance
24 X 7 expectation from management
Very rough on experienced hires - tends to discount their experience

Advice to Senior Management

Open your eyes to the way the rest of the world is treating their employees. They are your best assets and instead of paying only lip service to this axiom, do something about it.

Pros

Good opportunity to work on large scale implementations that you can't possibly get anywhere else, only Tier 1 companies are able to provide the chance to work on these sort of projects. Good to get experience and learn best practices about work.

Cons

Compensation is really poor compared to similar jobs elsewhere, when starting as a new recruit you really don't have much of a say in which projects you get placed upon. Range of different managers you will work with, some great, some bad and some just plain nasty.

Advice to Senior Management

Wish that we can have a culture of people not behaving like hard-working robots and drones and have a work-life balance. Find that most of the 'normal' management are people who have a past career outside before they joined accenture.

Pros

Accenture is a good base for junior people to learn base skills and experience with demanding and interesting clients.
People are supportive and friendly
Good access to knowledge
Interesting clients

Cons

Accenture has a technocratic view of management and organisation that ignores some of the basic things that motivate or demotivate people. Senior management roles are not well supported by timely metrics and reporting and people ate this level are dis-empowered by some very tailoristic practices.
Remuneration well below market
HR function broken
Diminishing respect for strategic consulting

Advice to Senior Management

Sort out what you want to do with strategic consulting
Pay competitively

Pros

Excellent oppourtunity for travel, after a while you can operte as a contrctor with the safety net of working for a large company, i.e. use relationships to pick and choose where you work...

Cons

Some of the middle management are less than inspiring and thry seem to have become desperate to recruit recently so the calibre of experiences hires is also not great.

Advice to Senior Management

- More of an emphasis should be placed on training rather than have peope wing it, additionally middle management should be taught how to lead and not just be expert at their niche technical area

Pros

Great people
Very collaborative culture
Good global network

Cons

Long hours
Hard for work life balance
Can be many roles that are supporting large implementations as opposed to 'pure' strategy roles

Advice to Senior Management

Better leadership
Increase sales of 'pure strategy'

Pros

Complex group of people, junior, senior people.

Cons

Work/life balance. Quality of work. Appropiate training. Respect for workers

Advice to Senior Management

Utilise all those investments in HR management to achive effective results on people satisfaction

Pros

diverse work opportunities, many clients

Cons

meeting the tough client committments

Advice to Senior Management

continue on the flexible working path

Pros

Great training, opportunities and highliy motivated and (usually) intelligent people. Broad experiences with great mentors and support in your career development. Up to date technology, great industry experience and leading edge practice. Accenture are not scared to throw you in the deep end and its sink or swim!

Cons

Worklife balance is always a concern, but if you work hard and are passionate you are rewarded. Some people become disillusioned due to mismatching expectations, make sure you communicate yours clearly!

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the support of your people, keep up the passion for delivery and remember to mentor the next generation.

Pros

Accenture is a high intensity workplace and this is reflected in its market presence (and subsequent effect on your resume). You get to work on big projects with talented people and be part of the biggest changes to some of the biggest companies in the world.

Cons

Compensation is the major downside - unwritten company policy is to pay you just enough so that you don't quit. Promotions are yearly only and based mostly on your relationship with your career counselor, rather than your performance. A significant factor in promotion is your time at level, so that someone who has been a poor performer for 3-4 years is more likely to be promoted than a high performer for 1 year. Salary increases are non-existant as this is tied to promotions.

In terms of daily work, Accenture now looks towards large-scale projects which have significant overhead and middle management which often leaves people feeling like cogs in a giant wheel. Internally, procedures and systems are laughably out of date and frustrating. The vast majority of internal functions required by consultants (IT help, finance, hr) have been outsourced overseas meaning long delays, language difficulties and constant procedural hassles in getting basic administration completed.

There are significant gaps in role selection as well - technical IT people end up in functional roles and vice versa. There is a distinct feeling of being a peg put in a hole - if there is a staffing gap, any available resource fills it, rather than the most appropriate.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop looking for big projects, which are stretching company resources past breaking point. This would reduce your staffing requirements, which would mean you could focus on compensating your current staff better and train & improve them. Start listening to internal surveys and action the results, rather than writing emails about how you're excited to be doing internal surveys. Train people to perform at higher levels and promote the ones who succeed, rather than promote people who have been around the longest. Staffing mismatches are an indication that your HR strategy of outsourced + 1 scheduler doesn't work.

But mostly importantly, start listening to your employees. Ever since you went public, you stopped listening.