Northern Trust Reviews

Pros

Work-life balance, friendly people, trustworthy name.

Cons

May be stagnant at times, difficult to make a dent right away.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a more aggressive stance.

Pros

Good name to have on your resume, stable job, don;t have to put in as many hours as counterparts in other companies.

Cons

paid less then everyone else in the industry,

Pros

Good, stable private bank. Avoided most of the financial follies and shenanigans that have taken place over the past few years. Decent benefits package with lucrative vacation and sick time. People are nice to work with.

Cons

Management has failed miserably in moving the company forward. NT has been too stuck in their old ways and failed to be proactive with changes in order to stay competitive. Now they are forced to make drastic changes without much forethought. The new client service model is a mild disaster and the people running the show seem clueless. Qualified internal candidates are being passed over for promotion in favor of less qualified external candidates. Managers spend all day in meetings where it seems nothing is accomplished. I've seen meetings about meetings along with post-meeting meetings. Weak managers are never weeded out and ultimately promoted causing more distress for those working under them. And they wonder why quality employees are leaving...

Advice to Senior Management

1. Get rid of the weak layers of management. 2. Take a hard look at your new service model and how it is effecting employees and clients 3. Look at your stock price....it's telling you something

Pros

Great vacation policy; Excellent shuttle bus service.

Cons

Anything but team oriented; Cutthroat; Siloed and disingenuous

Advice to Senior Management

Practice what you preach

Pros

Northern Trust provides great benefits including 3 weeks of vacation for new employees.
Additionally,, there are many opportunities for growth.

Cons

One of the downsides of working at Northern Trust is that it could be too conservative.
Most promotions are based solely on your network of people rather then your education and qualifications.

Advice to Senior Management

Some advice for the leadership at Northern Trust is to give employees a chance whose background and qualifications are a fit for job openings.

Pros

- good people to work with
- solid Chicago-based bank (well - known)
- good exposure to senior management in global offices

Cons

- bad pay
- no bonus
- unsatisfactory career development
- bad pay
- no bonus
- poor compensation overall

Advice to Senior Management

Management is pretty good overall - they just need to work harder to get more comp money for their direct reports

Pros

work and life balance is helpful

Cons

Communication by senior management could be better

Pros

good quality people overall, decent benefits

Cons

upmarket selling to clients with $2 Million or more in liquidity does not work in many markets outside of Chicago, LA, NY, etc, a lot of consolidation and closing of offices have occured and more to come probably

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue that 30% down on financing a building or home may be conservative but it does not bode well for growth of revenue which the company is touting it needs to do--stop speaking out of both sides of your mouth

Pros

Good work-life balance, benefits package is reasonable and the offices are generally friendly places to work.

Cons

Training, training and training.
Completely non-existent, no interest in furthering employee on-the-job skills.
Overly corporate sometimes and very slow-moving on technology and little stability in senior management in IT.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest some money in TRAINING!

Pros

Especially for people in the earlier stages of their careers, Northern Trust serves as a great training ground. I learned to run meetings, influence groups and stake holders, practice lots of public speaking, and generally become an all around more professional person. I also learned how to play office politics well--this may not be a particularly noble skill, but it is a valuable one in the realities of many workplaces.

Cons

Compensation is less than competitive, especially compared to other investment management firms. Politics and bureaucracy are all around stifling. There's also a good amount of talking behind people's back and general back stabbing. Senior leadership is wanting on many, many levels. One of their main job duties seems to be regularly re-organizing and re-shuffling the different units (at least on the investment side) so that they can send company-wide announcements on the changes. At least that keeps them busy so that the minions can get actual work accomplished.

Advice to Senior Management

Northern Trust certainly benefited from the glut of high quality labor that became available as a result of the recent economic downturn. However, unless they make some drastic changes to the organization (culture, incentives, etc), its unlikely that they'll be able to keep many of them when labor markets become tighter. That assumes, of course, that they want to move on from their informal HR motto: Train the best, keep the rest.