BT Reviews

Pros

a company with a lot of potential and a lot of talented people who are greatly under appreciated and over worked

Cons

the regional senior managment look after themselves at all costs, many having been there for a number of years. The last person to come on board with a full expat package was the HR director, and the HR team are bonused and incented to reduce staff numbers. There is no people care...

Advice to Senior Management

treat people with respect, tell them the truth and allow them to develop rather than trying to destroy them and work them to death.

Pros

Work from home opportunities
Somewhat decent work life balance, depending on what group you're in
Good line managers (direct managers)

Cons

The pay is well below market rate, but you'll sure get a lot of "experience"
Communication within the company
Silo'd work teams
Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing

Advice to Senior Management

I don't think i could give advice that has not already been given. BT used to be very caring about its people and when the economy tanked is when those values went out the window. bring them back!

Pros

- Friendly people
- Accessible senior managers
- Enthusiastic atmosphere
- Easy to move jobs within the company (in fact, it's encouraged! so I never get bored)
- Global reach and exciting technology
- Flexible working (I work from home at least once a week! sometimes the whole week if I don't have urgent face-to-face meetings)

Cons

It's hard to think of cons. I guess I would have to say general cons that you could find in any company really. Salaries are great, but could be higher (who wouldn't want that!).

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing a great job. I think most of the focus in 2010 will be around excellent customer propositions and great customer satisfaction!

Pros

it's a relative progressive conglomerate, good work-life balance, nice people, and a lot of talented people. good benefits as well longer-than-average pay leave.

Cons

some times slow and hard to make an impact, especially for young folks. It's always hard to make sth achieved

Advice to Senior Management

it's a right path to go, but how will you release the burden from being a monopoly in telecom field.

Pros

Very smart and likable staff. Interesting ideas and a pretty short distance from conceiving an idea to being granted a budget to test it. Very low pressure environment, if you like that sort of thing.

Cons

For reasonably ambitious professionals, there will inevitably come a time when you realize that there is no point to your research. Almost no idea ever "graduates" from the lab to the market. So the biggest risk is that you will get existential problems after a while.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut the research arm. Seriously, there is no point of having one and it seems to be there just for show.

Pros

- BT went on an acquisition spree between 2006 and 2008. Because of this, client needs are easy to satisfy given BT's wide range of products and solutions.
- Good infrastructure in place for teleworking.
- Well documented processes and good collaboration tools.

Cons

- In the US, BT acquired INS, which makes up most of it's US presence. The unfortunate part, is that there's about 3 people from heritage INS upper management that have a legitimate, sound vision. The rest of upper and mid-level management can't execute. Luckily, there are incredibly granular processes (driven by IT systems) that must to be followed in order to get anything done. These processes keep these below average managers from causing a total failure. The side effect of these "anyone can do it" processes is that BT ended up with robotic managers that can't do anything except follow processes. On the lower and mid-management tiers, there's hardly any true leadership. Many of these "good ol' boys" have worked together for 15+ years, and keep key positions for each other, so don't even think about advancement in to their domain.

- BT hasn't spent much time training their management in key leadership domains. Most management "training" consists of communicating direction for the next quarter or year. Inadequate managers manage other inadequate managers, and none of them realize the real problems that exist within the business.

- BT goes out of their way to make client interaction difficult. Poor accounting requirements and a difficult legal department make working with clients a disaster.

- Strong internal political issues exist (even with upper management), especially between the US and the UK. It's hard to get anything done that requires the assistance of overseas resources.

Advice to Senior Management

It seems hardly any attention was paid to evaluate management for true leadership or inspirational abilities. Retrain or replace these guys.

Pros

It's a large company so the opportunies appear to be there, but do not be fooled by this because once they have targetted you, no amount of prayers or medicines will stop you from falling ill.

Cons

Bullying and harassment in the company is rife. I have personally experienced it to the extent that I became a nervous wreck, and so has many of my colleagues. The company is too big for a senior influencer in the organisation to take personal ownership of issues and therefore a 'pass the buck' culture prevails when there are issues such as grievance, disciplinary and attendance procedures. I agree with the other reviewr I read here about the company being worse than what it used to be. Right now is a not a very nice place to work. Performance management is being used undercover to select individuals for managed exits, rather than helping them to achieve their best. This has resulted in genuinely talented people leaving the company for fear of being targetted. The company has been criticsing employees for the tiniest of problems, eg. 'you didn't say anything' or 'you wrote a long email'. Empowerment is not there for the senior managers - the company is dancing to the tune of directors who have absolutely no clue what they are doing. They are only concerned about 'looking good for the city' and not really bothered about the workforce. They forget that it is the workforce which makes BT - not the few at the top.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the bullying and harassment and have a heart - run the company with the values that you are trying to get the workers to exhibit, i.e. Heart, Trustworthy, Straightforward, Customer Connected, Inspiring, Helpful, etc. From where I observing, the directors exemplify none of these values.

Pros

Flexibility (Home-working etc)
Decent working environment
Excellent experience
Plenty of opportunity to grow and take more on - just don't expect a promotion

Cons

Very long hours - With many agency and contracted employees being rolled off during 2009 - the pressure has increased significantly on the remaining employee base, many if not most of my colleagues are currently working 50+ hours per week.

Pay frozen for the 09/10 Financial Year.

Performance management has become ridiculous, reams of documentation and evidence are necessary to achieve even a basic "not underperforming" rating, and even that doesn't guarantee you won't be placed on a performance improvement plan which is hardly encouraging - meaning people are constantly pre-occupied with documenting their own activity instead of actually working. This is in part to weed out under performing staff (of which there are many), but BT needs to find a better way to manage this problem.

Advice to Senior Management

Start working on the next generation of products, need to massively diversify the current BT Retail portfolio, need to start competing with Google for example. The "Broadband line" needs to evolve into a full online customer solution, e.g. browsers, searching, social networking, retail platforms and supply channels, banking, advertising revenue models etc - otherwise you will find someone like Google buy BT out to reduce their cost of infrastructure and drive up their own market base.

Pros

Very supportive environment
Low stress
Excellent maternity / annual leave policies
Can work from home

Cons

Inertia in getting anything done
Lack of drive of many employees - feeling of entitlement
Lack of rigour and quality in work completed

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on exiting low-performing people from the business
Pick a small number of strategic projects and execute them brilliantly - don't try everything and hope something will work!

Pros

There are no longer any good reasons to work at BT. The company was bad in the 90's when I worked for them. It is now an appalling company to work for.

Cons

Bullying and harassment by Managers and senior Management (right up to CEO level) is rife and part of the BT culture. It has become institutionalised. If your face doesn't fit and you are not one of the Management's favourites, then you're out of a job. Under the current economic climate, BT are using Bullying tactics to get rid of people rather than pay them redundancy... PIP or Personal Improvement Plans are being used to victimise a number of targetted employees, alleging that they are under performing and then dismissing them with a couple of month's pay

Advice to Senior Management

Do the honorable thing... get out, get a life and leave management to one's that know how to manage people. You're a bunch of ignorant BULLIES.