Mercer Reviews in Sydney, Australia Area

Pros

Premium name in its market, strongest database in the worlds, extensive intellectual properties.

Cons

Relatively low compensation and benefits package compared to other similar players in the industry, unreliable organization structure

Advice to Senior Management

Please consider to retain your senior management team so that it won't be too often changed.

Pros

-Great/smart bunch of people with varied skills set and educational/cultural background
-One of the better places for HR consulting
-Periodic fun team events are good
-Reasonably non-competitive; colleagues are willing to help you out when in need
-Better work/life balance compared to some other consulting firms
-Very accomodating to your work/life needs - e.g. part-time, work from home
-You can really make a difference by developing processes and tools to improve efficiency or generating initatives to boost client engagement - there is room to be creative and management is supportive of this

Cons

-Extremely high turnover especially after the yearly bonus payout
-Poor pay, benefits and performance review; getting a pay increase below CPI when you have met expectations for the year is an absolute joke
-Poor performance management with very little transparency on decisions made re. promotion and pay increase
-Trust issue at the management level. Management is not entirely honest with employees at times
-Very political --if you can manage upwards really well, you are half way there to be more successful
-Inadequate processes to guide decisions mean that leaders/managers' approach can vary and may not result in the best interest of the employees
- Bad managers can get away with decisions that appear unfair to some employees

Advice to Senior Management

Be open and honest to your employees. Try to see through the political agenda of some staff and stop trying too hard to impress upwards that you forget your own team. You need to change your mindset and see the real value of your current employees and remunerate them accordingly. 'Buy' less and 'build' more talent

Pros

- A lot of incredibly talented, but friendly people to work with;
- Minimal levels of office politics;
- Good support for further studies;
- Somewhat flexible work/life balance, depends on which department you work in;
- Good opportunities to transfer to other departments;

Cons

- Low pay. Ridiculously low pay compared to competitors and other corporates.
- Low benefits. Seriously, employees of other companies less well known than Mercer get more love than we do. Even retail banks pay more than Mercer.
- Career progression. It's hard to progress in Mercer. It seems easier to just leave the company for two years and come back rather than stay for those two years in terms of getting a promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

You cannot possibly retain the talent required to keep Mercer going on the current pay structure. I know for example, that virtually an entire PRACTICE resigned en masse and started their own company since they felt that they were not properly compensated. Suffice to say that it was the end of that particular business line for Mercer in Australia for a good few years - short sighted, considering how lucrative it was in terms of fat profit margins.