Cadient Group Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Strategic for the healthcare industry--good strategic leadership. Allows employees to manage their own personal schedules. Respects the biz dev process. Good research team

Cons

Not necessarily client-focused. Unimpressive creative. Allows too much flexibility of team members. Too much emphasis on internal needs rather than client growth needs

Advice to Senior Management

Continue focusing on ideas and new business, but allow for greater emphasis and flexibility on inline growth rather than internal processes

Pros

almost want to put not applicable! but i will say, most of my co-workers were cool. a lot of the people who left were great, now it seems like everyone is trying to leave.

Cons

management decisions, layoffs, strategic vision is hardly believable. employee morale is low. the exciting new offices are rather lame.

Advice to Senior Management

be honest with your employees. they don't believe what you're saying.

Pros

it is a place to work, and they do pay you. You can pretty much get away with anything because no one pays attention to you unless you're senior management.

Cons

The retards are running the zoo. Promotions to people who don't deserve it. They are trying to sell stuff to clients that didn't work in the 90s. Creativity is squashed in favor of strategy, and making the client happy.

Advice to Senior Management

Replace the CEO, start trusting the employees you hired.

Pros

Coworkers are generally very bright and fun to work with. The work is challenging and interesting, and it involves cutting-edge Web technology. The benefits package is better than adequate.

Cons

Relentless expectation (often demands) for long hours of overtime well into the night and over weekends -- including explicit instruction to cancel any personal plans -- without any additional compensation or even any possibility for comp time, coupled with hours docked from you paycheck if you sleep in and show up late in the morning. (I have seen people not only docked but actually repremanded for sleeping in and showing up at 11 a.m. after being required to work without extra pay till 2 a.m. the night before.) Lots of last-minute work done way too fast to allow for quality control, and the result is a lot of sloppy work and lost accounts. Virtually no communication from the top about important management decisions; when I was there it was impossible to get an organizational chart, and the various work groups had abstract names that had no functional meaning.

Advice to Senior Management

Institute montly skip-level meetings for ALL employees, and take the feedback seriously. Stop thinking that the employees are driven to perform only for the sake of company profits, unless you can really guarantee that everyone gets a share of profit. You need to give other good motivation for people to care. FInally, stop docking time off if you won't pay overtime. You need to institute a comp time policy asap or else don't be surprised if employees get together on a class action suit to recoup their hundreds of hours of uncompensated labor.

Pros

Co-workers are talented and conscientious individuals. Satisfying client needs are high on employees agenda. Great place to start out a career.

Cons

Senior management looks for increased revenue while wearing down employee morale. No respect for the employees. I'd love to give my all to help the company succeed, but the lack of recognition and respect sucks you dry.

Advice to Senior Management

Retool the management team with new blood. The management team is completely unaware of the mood of the floor.

Pros

I work with some of the best people I've ever met. I can honestly say that I've made true friends here.

Cons

I don't agree with everything that's been posted here. Our CEO is not a glorified PM, but he is a hell of a salesman (the best I've ever met). With that said, there's a big difference between being a salesman and a CEO. His recent trend of going on every little pitch and presentation that comes along suggests we are desperate. And any potential client would pick up on that. It's dangerous to establish the company's CEO as being too accessible.

Beyond that, Cadient is clearly headed into purely consulting territory. There is very little value placed on creativity. The company does nothing to foster creative productivity or quality. Instead, it settles on mediocre product that pales in comparison to its own work just 2 years ago.

PMs have not been properly trained. Designers are treated like children and consequently act like children.

Advice to Senior Management

Cadient's senior management is nothing short of passive aggressive. They send out email reminders of company policy instead of speaking to the one or two employees who need to be spoken with. Management does NOTHING to enforce process, which is directly responsible for projects going overbudget (and it happens consistently). Nobody here is interested an being the authority figure.

Blank walls, tan carpet and cubicles are not inspiring anybody. 2 years without raises or bonuses, and essentially taking a pay-cut to pay our new health insurance provider for similar coverage that we had prior to switching is not incentive for anyone to stay.

PERCEPTION IS REALITY. If it looks like Cadient doesn't care about it's employees, it might as well not. I believe management actually does care. They can't afford not to. But they need to be more conscious of the decisions they're making.

Pros

The people are excellent to work with.

Cons

The management has no clue how to fix things and just make things worse.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to be let go.

Pros

Nice coworkers
reasonable flex schedule policy
average compensation
Great with providing sound strategy and decent service to Clients

Cons

Layoffs
No solid plan for future growth
Employee efforts are not appreciated
Many inexperienced PMs
Senior Management is too focused on internal operations and maintaining an unreasonable profit margin instead of Client needs

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the employees and the CIO. You need a CEO who understands where the industry is heading.
Thanks for the severance.

Pros

great people and some great clients. that should equal some great potential.

Cons

zero potential for professional development. i remember repeatedly requesting additional work, new challenging projects, and opportunities to try new things. what did i get? nada. good people stagnated.

Advice to Senior Management

learn how to properly utilize account management. it will mean the difference between keeping clients, and losing them to digitas.

Pros

Good benefits and salary relative to other companies. A top notch client roster and people that are committed to their work.

Cons

Inability of management to manage their clients well. Will do work they don't agree with simply to not disagree with the client. Long hours with very little recognition - would be fine, but the atmosphere is so blah. Lack of creative resources, specifically copy development. Design team has talented people that lacks a leader with vision. Often will settle for "good enough" because everyone is pushed so hard.

Advice to Senior Management

Develop a better atmosphere. Trust your experts and treat them as such.