Mercer Reviews

Pros

The best reason to work at Mercer is flexibility.

Cons

No more room to grow.

Advice to Senior Management

Show current employees who have grown with the company importance and recognition by offering fair compensation in comparison to new hires. It is demoralizing to find out that new hires get so much more than you do and you end up training them.

Pros

For consulting, the hours are great (minus the LA commute). Relatively low stress environment, depending on the amount of work load you take on.

Cons

The work itself wasn't particularly invigorating - perhaps that is the nature of insurance & employee benefits.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to feedback from younger associates.

Pros

Good health benefits, nice cubicle.

Cons

They make employees use Windows XP and it's 2012! They are still using Microsoft Office 2003 which is absurd because this company LOVES Microsoft office but they force everyone to use the old versions. Only one PC monitor for everyone (even though the parent company, Marsh and McLennan, gives their employees two monitors). Printers are shared by 20-30 people. Ridiculous since people are printing documents like crazy. All client materials are created on PowerPoint using Office 2003!! So everyone is printing these presentations constantly on the few printers that this company piddles out.

There are so many locations with a few employees doing one little piece. You can't get answers to how or why things are done a certain way because there is no transparency. So these tiny groups think their piece is so important but they have no idea why they are doing it. People learn not to ask questions. They just do what they are told, like children.

The client invoicing is a rat's maze. They all act like the last thing they want to do is get paid by the client because in order to send an invoice it has to go thru several groups to be approved, one group actually checks the grammar on the invoice and cover letter. I am serious!

The company does not provide soda, juice or snacks, EVER. And NEVER a lunch from these tightwads. No holiday parties, NOTHING. No Christmas gifts, no gift certificate or frozen turkey, not even a card. Mr. Grinch and Mr. Scrooge run this place.

However, the Principals write EVERYTHING off. If they take a few of their associates for a drink after work, they expense it. The Principals NEVER use their own money to buy anything. But you will never get a gift from them at Christmas because they can’t expense that!

Advice to Senior Management

Act like your employees are human and you are humane.

Pros

Used to be an awesome place to work. Fun people, challenging and rewarding, great space. Was always proud of coworkers and clients.

Cons

Corporate interference creating an unhappy uncomfortable unsuccessful place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop being so corporate. The customers are catching on.

Pros

Excellent co-workers. Good work tools. Good benefits package (but being whittled away. Good flexibility. Excellent training for junior people. A good place to start a career in HR management.

Cons

Leadership is unpredictable and very inwardly focused. Local management has little authority -- they are told what to do and do it whether they support the action or not. Employee programs are mostly window-dressing --- the real culture is to squeeze as much work out of employees as possible. Mercer employees are shoemaker's children. HR practices are opprossive and The HR Function is a joke.

Advice to Senior Management

Go try a few consulting assignments --- this is not a widgit factory. You need to understand that the business and, ideally, have earned a track record of accomplishment AS A CONSULTANT to lead other consultants.

Pros

Work life balance, ok benefits, usually people are cool to work with

Cons

Senior Management has no idea what they are doing, no training, they really ask you to drink the cool-aide. This is a job you take and move on, a career here will lead to disappointment later on. Mercer has divested, re branded, acquired, and make more poor business decisions at the expense of its employees.

Pros

great client base - opportunities to work with great companies
breadth and depth of intellectual capital
opportunities to grow
some very intelligent colleagues

Cons

slow decision making and bureaucracy - recent changes should improve this though
some not so intelligent colleagues
sometimes too US-centric

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

flexible work schedule, competent colleagues, mutual respect

Cons

compensation transparency is lacking. salary increases accompanying internal promotion are dismal.

Pros

Gain experience that will come in handy for future jobs, especially with health and benefits. The people you sit next to are nice and friendly, and always willing to help you out.

Cons

Your team leaders don't care about you, as long as your stats are on point, not that I would know, my team leader never had a feedback session with me. Training was so unorganized, it wasted a lot of valuable time - especially call monitoring with tenured reps, they never switched their gates so you were listening to calls that you were not training for.

Advice to Senior Management

Get organized and realize that the representatives are more important than most of supervisors.

Pros

There is lots of opportunity to advance in the company at the beginning of your career, things move fast and you progress quickly. The people at Mercer are all pretty dedicated and pull out all the stops to try and deliver on our promises.

Cons

No clear career path as you get farther up the chain. Mercer invests less in their employees that they used to.

Advice to Senior Management

Better development of mid senior level people is required.