Pros

- good "name" position in the IT outsourcing market (ITO, BPO, GPO, etc)
- huge name brand clients
- benefits

Cons

- Horrible Executive Management
- "brother-in-law hiracy" (it's not what you know, but who you're related to...)
- Fear based leadership
- Absolutely no internal direction
- Everything is a "one-off" transaction
- No formal processes or procedures
- No internal communcation or idea sharing between departments
- Con-man style approach to developing contracts with clients (please read the fine print!)
- one of the most disfunctional companys on the planet.
* ACS = Alot of Corp Silos -or- Always Changes Something

Advice to Senior Management

Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Think about this quote for a second and ask yourself, does this quote apply to the way you run your company? Just because you've been doing things a certain way for the last 20 years, doesnt mean that you are going to survive another 20 years. Get out of the stoneage, and focus on cleaning house. Encourage internal communcation and idea sharing between departments. Create a formalized process for contract creation and quoting.

Pros

Company has a strong position in the industry- BPO, Government
Diverse solution sets
Positioned as a low cost provider
Predominately good people, hardworking and competent

Cons

Executive leadership is slippery
Ability to deliver will continue to be difficult
Culture of fear, of one keeping their job
ACS- Always Changing Something

Advice to Senior Management

Need to get rid of the Chairman, almost impossible since he owns majority of voting stock
Change the culture of fear, this impacts everyones outlook and decisions to always be short term

Pros

Opportunity to work with former colleagues again, large company with commitment to continue to grow and compete in the technical and business services industry.

Cons

Ratio of executive and senior employees is small in comparison to the junior and less compensated 'back office' employees, resulting in the former not being able to contribute to 401k plans (due to federal regulations around participation of 'highly compensated' employees) beyond their first year. At the time of my employment the company's financial management system was the most cumbersome and least functional I had encountered - surprising and unacceptable for a company of its size. Outsourced payroll services - hard to get knowledgeable assistance.

Advice to Senior Management

Lynn Blodgett's promotion to CEO was a great move for ACS and morale - he appeared to be an inspired and committed leader.

Pros

Job Security - ACS signs long contracts with its outsourcers, and with a presence in 38 countries... job stability, availability, and transfer options abound.
Resume Booster - Working for a Fortune 500 looks good on a resume
They love Texas - I'm certain that if you work at the Dallas based office, things are great (benefits and pay look really good for that market). This package doesn't really look that good for New Englanders... but that's covered below.

Cons

Corporate stifles the Small Business Unit - Our SBU has some of the best employees and best managers I've ever worked with. However, corporate has a tendancy to step in to apply some Dallas-centric ideals and philosophies that don't translate well into all markets. Raises and bonuses aren't dependent on the functioning of the SBU, but on the success of the corporation as a whole, and this winds up punishing the hardest working employees, and demoralizing their work ethics.
HR has alot of turnover, with no personalized service - When I started, we had a Workplace Partnere, the one guy at HR that could help you find anything you needed. Corporate replaced this with a 1-800 number, and now you are just a number when you call. This allows them to more effectively find reasons to deny qualifying life status changes with regard to benefit enrollment, delay payments to benefit packages by "losing things in the mail", and to make matters worse by making you get lost in a maze of extensions and phone numbers.
No positive feedback, either verbally or monetarily - We work hard all year being told that its a Pay-for-Performance shop, but then when reviews come, the hardest working employees got a 5% pay cut. The company says that the cut was needed to weather the economic storm... which sounds good so long as the company doesn't post comparitively phenomenal Q3 earnings. To make matters worse, they expect us to work more hours for the lesser pay, and we're not even given a Thank You for taking one for the team.

Advice to Senior Management

Your shareholders are important, but the employees make your company succeed. A better long-term management strategy would be to hire and reward talent, and find savings by eliminating needless beurocracy... as opposed to finding savings in your employees' benefits packages.

Pros

Benefits
Schedule Flexibility
Management
Corporate Influence

The management is a great group of people and they support every decision you make in your career.

Cons

Pay
Job Requirements
Location
Advancement

You get a salary review only once a year and the base pay kind of stinks.

Advice to Senior Management

Give more credit to your employee's.

Pros

Good balance between Life and work, salaries are not bad, you will have all the required tools for your work.

Cons

There is no knowledge management and sharing, no opportunities to grow up or increase salary. Too much HR rotation. PErformance review and feedback is not really good. Everything is by phone and email nothing one to one.

Advice to Senior Management

You need to improve the relashionship with the employees and perform some feedback and performance review in a better way.

Pros

A lot of the people I work with are pretty nice, as long as they are not part of the management staff.

Cons

Way too much overtime. We've been told to plan family events based on the 'chance' that we may have to work overtime (and we are already pulling about 10 hours extra a week). I have a baby at home that I don't get to see grow up because when I get home she is ready for bed. Management is rude if you need time off or are sick. They get upset over every small thing, but never praise on the good things. Very negative place to work and if there were other jobs out there, I would not be here.

Advice to Senior Management

Take some time and listen to the people at the bottom of the totem pole. Our experiences everyday would help in making company decisions on how to run the system. And seriously.... who wants to work this much overtime? We have families that are growing and we don't get a chance to experience it with them.

Pros

flexibility with a many options for working from home

Cons

how bout the 4% decrease in pay across the board instead of annual salary increases. this comes at a time when business prospects are at the highest in years. the company simply uses hard economic times to take money out of the pockets of employees, who are suppose to just be happy to have a job.

Advice to Senior Management

treat employees a whole lot better

Pros

Work-life balance
Being able to work from home
semi ression proof job
Good place to work while looking for another job

Cons

Promised bonuses on project completions, then would not pay out
Always freezing raises
No opportunity for advancement
Nepotism is rampant

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees better and you would not have such high turnover.
Quit suspending raises at the end of the year to make financials look better

Pros

Umm... They're advertising hundreds of job openings in a market where high unemployment has people starting over at the bottom rung. I guess it's better than migrant farm-work, but without the freedom of choice in schedule.

Cons

I have a huge list of issues that have arisen in the weeks I've worked for ACS, including blatant lies from recruiting and management, inefficient working processes, and complete lack of consideration for employees. ACS underpays people and then blames employees for not working hard enough to "prove themselves". The Activity Based Compensation (ABC) plan is a scam, from what I can tell so far, and from what I've read in other reviews. There is not enough space here for me to describe all of the "opportunities" ACS has provided me and my colleagues during a relatively short time. Truthfully, the minute I have another position, and a plan to move on, I'm out.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect would be a good idea if you intend to retain employees.