BT Reviews in London, UK Area

Pros

CAREER DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNTIIES ARE GOOD

Cons

finance people is not paid well

Advice to Senior Management

flexible in terms of increasing financial reward to high performer

Pros

good team buzz and reputable company

Cons

not loyal to employees
promotion aspect not there

Advice to Senior Management

need to be more people orientated and not authoritarian

Pros

There are fantastic advancement opportunities within the company. In my experience they prefer to hire from within. Most levels of management are adept at recognizing talent.

Cons

While most managers are fair, I have come across some very incompetent managers while at the company. They need to do a better job of vetting those they promote. Very little organizational synergy.

Advice to Senior Management

Harmonize your goals - You hire from within which i believe is very fair, however you need to consider whether you need a team of people to do what one person could do.

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

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

Flexible working opportunities are great, although some managers do not advocate it. Pay is good although women are still behind their male counterparts, but progress is being made. You also get the opportunity to work on some interesting projects and are always learning new skills

Cons

Performance management is becomming a big stick to beat people with and is carried out in a harsh and systematic way. Workloads are huge and demands put upon you each day are just not manageable, yet they are trying to promote a good work/life balance - it's just senior manager paying lip service to the new "buzz word"

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the root cause of problems and try to change one thing, rather than using a scatter-gun approach then walking away and expecting someone else to deal

Pros

Extremely flexible place to work. My manager is outstanding and really motivates me to reach for higher goals. Some of the smartest people I've ever known work here. Very well-known company that opens doors all over the country. We don't do redundancies (yet), so it's a very secure place to work. Amazing technologies being developed that (hopefully) will make the company a ton of money!

Cons

Can be very bureaucratic and slow to respond. Sometimes feels like it exists only to employ as many people as possible for as long as possible. Quite a lot of dead weight; analogue people in a digital age. Very poor stock price lately! :-)

Advice to Senior Management

Focus and execute. Seems like we're trying to do too much and not doing any one of them very well.

Pros

No redundancy - if you work hard then you will be rewarded. Large organisation which is only looking to resource within its own people resources. Pension and benefits even if you are new are fantatic. In many cases the salary beats the averages in the UK. Very flexible for any personal issues such as caring for relatives etc.

Cons

Lots of people who think job for life means that they can coast in thier role and that no one has the right to challenge this....too many layers and not enough people able to make decisions. Very silo'd in their approaches and not enough people seeing BT as one organisation

Advice to Senior Management

Sort out the performance issues. Give more attonomy to the Line Managers

Pros

Very broad range of businesses, so lots of opportunities for sideway moves. A very well established brand and organisation in the UK, with a real social conscience and a serious approach to CSR and green issues. Great pension (for the moment), great holidays, great bonus. Very high visibility in the consciousness of the British public, particularly the over 50's, so a great way to understand that market place.
Historically, there had been some real attempt at international growth which provided a good platform for personal learning of other business cultures. The UK business is the backbone of modern society in helping internet traffic in the UK

Cons

A political organisation that is just starting to visibly link poor performance with consequences. Performance management is not adequate and there are layers of management which are really not needed. There is also a habit of recruiting new skills externally (for example to develop the mobile or TV offerings in the UK consumer market) when in fact those skills may well exist internally, but knowledge management is poor in many parts of the organisation. The business is so broad it can lack focus - when in doubt, it knee-jerks towards high profit types activities starving of investment the parts that should guarantee its future.

Advice to Senior Management

Be tough on the cost base