Mercer Reviews

Pros

people there are great; you can learn a great deal there with very competent supervisors. Not as busy and tiring as other consulting firms

Cons

limited career advancement. At the same time, by joining the firm, you might be constrained to HR consulting to some extent. It does not matter if you wanna pursue this as your long term career goal

Advice to Senior Management

The leaders at Mercer are great and offer timely feedback to the employees. If lunch can provided in door, I believe efficiency can be much higher

Pros

The organization is always changing which allows for opportunity and growth

Cons

Change management is not great and layoffs are constant

Advice to Senior Management

Show appreciation to their staff

Pros

confortable environment with friendly people around.
Many daily tasks with some side work. Good in general.

Cons

since most of them are repeated work, some might feel not being challenged.

Pros

It is a great place to start off if you want to work in the industry but don't expect to see much growth unless you move from company to company every so often

Cons

The Canadian office tajes direction from the US office even though they are two distinctly different lines of business resulting in budget balancing that does not necessarily make sense.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow the Canadian division to be run separately from the US it will greatly improve the employee and management relations.

Pros

Vactaion
Holiday
Flexibility
Work from home
Retirement account
No stress

Cons

Disorganized Senior Leadership strategy
Constant Reoganization
Power struggle type situations
Behind the times in terms of technology
To much emphasis on offshore work and not enough on quality of product

Advice to Senior Management

Some of the past leadership did not have the skills needed and were to busy worried about their image. Anytime a project was not going well and this was bought to their attention, that person was too negative and not a team player. This became the atmosphere and culture, where senior leadership did not want to hear anything negative about projects, etc. This spread throughout the organization, especially Application Development. Projects would not meet goals and deadlines, and that management passed the buck. This lead to the constant Reorgs or people moving on.

Pros

- Good dental and welfare benefits. Medical getting pricey and no HSA account option.
- Co-workers are generally okay to work with.
- Good location for those taking the train and always find parking.
- Ability to be proactive if you are lucky and get a decent manager.

Cons

- You are treated like a child. You get told what to do by Senior Associates and above which hinders your growth as a manager. This will hurt you when trying to get out of the company to one that expect you to know how to manage.
- Remote management is terrible. Often the top managers are not in the same place as those that report to them. This causes problems to run rampant with no action taken with these guys to improve their ability to manage people. You are micro-managed with most everything but your manager might hardly be managed at all.
- Compensation is way lower than average market value. Some managers can make less than the people who report to them while outside hires are given higher salaries for job-hopping. This is not an isolated incident. I've been with the company for over 7 years and it happens all the time.
- Poorly managed HR team. They don't understand their function and don't partner with managers to resolve employee issues. They are scared of lawsuits but create an unfair environment for the over-performing employees.
- Schedules aren't flexible at all. Many of my direct reports get told this in the interview only to find out they are tied to a rigid schedule. Favortism reigns supreme so if you allow yourself to be micro-managed and never push back, you'll do just fine.
- Company training is a joke, plain and simple. Leadership gets mad when you ask questions without reading through every piece of material ever published about the subject. Ridiculous. I always embrace questions from my employees and simply can not accept the overall lack of ownership / responsibility taken by Senior Associates and above to do their job the right way.

Advice to Senior Management

Watch your Senior Associates, Principles and management much closer. Right under your nose you are losing top talent because people are afraid to ask questions. Get into the new age and get rid of the old management cliches that the loudest person in the room gets their way and that employees need to be told what to do. Teach them how to be leaders and top talent will stop running away.

Pros

Global, market leader, camraderie among local staff, pretty good benefits

Cons

Leadership is terrible at the Mercer and Investment Consulting level - no communication, lack of vision, exclusionary, does not reward top talent

Pros

Postive coworkers, advanced training programs, and good teamwork system.

Cons

Almost always work longer than a 40 hr a week job.

Pros

Nice group of people, understood "teaming", decent benefits, interesting projects.

Cons

Opportunities for promotions were difficult, could improve mentoring junior staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Mentoring junior staff can only help the company grow its talent.

Pros

Not very demanding
Location is convenient

Cons

Tools and software are outdated
No clear objectives, project management non-existent
Few opportunities to learn
Offices are spread widely, making communication slow and inefficient