Pros

Bonus alone. Fixed component less than the market offer
Good for freshers alone
Monthly free lunch

Cons

1)Lack of vision at top management
2)0% travel for employees below top management level
3)Lower ranks to support the top management travel by preparing report,data sheets and ppts.
4)Salary disparity at it's high within memebers of a team
5)Lack of efficient HR department owing to frequest resignations at HR manager level
6)Government offices ar much better when it comes to an approval,sanction,decision of any business relevent issue/matter
7)Not a great place to work for working mothers as work life balance wouldn't be met most of the times
8)Day in and day out it's always secondary research.No scope or thoughts at key menegement level to move into other areas apart from Sec.Research
9)Referred emloyees tend to receive outstanding gains when it comes to salary. Salary depends on key contacts that one has with the current employees at the firm and the referrers internal marketing capability
10)Have stock investments? You could some expert advices from seniors who only do that in office day in and out
11)"it's my least priority" kind of an attitude when it comes to employee career goals,progress and grievences
12)Lap top and Blackberries issued to senior most people who don't now how to operate them and who have no use of the same owing to nature of work.
13)Incapable and lethargic people at top management who are at their early 40's who have the ambition to retire from KPC alone.So not the right place for one who has the urge to learn new things and build a career for self

Advice to Senior Management

Delete old/incompetent/lethargic people from the top
Shrewdness is not a part of management at work
Think beyond secondary research. See for self where other KPOs have progressed already in Bagalore/India
Eat for self and also let others eat,else,the result would be indigestion causing Flatulence

Pros

Management truly support people
Entrepreneurial spirit
Reasonable compensation model
Benefits are excellent (22 days vacation, very good medical, etc)

Cons

Travel expectations
Difficult to become a specialist as short-term utilization takes precedence
There is too much focus on the bottom line, without taking into consideration impact on staff moral
Company is becoming SOP centric

Advice to Senior Management

Keep focusing on making PA a great place to work and we will be successful

Pros

Good opportunities to work with government at a senior level. Graduates and midlevel consultants are mostly very competent and ambitious. A place where you can reasonably build a long term consulting career if you work hard - no "up or out" approach. Reasonable in house training opportunities and a few nice benefits - sabbaticals, option to purchase additional annual leave, travel allowance for principal consultants and above. Bonuses can be very good if you join the right practice. Also, in the right practice in London, there is generally less travel than with competitors.

Cons

Senior partners can come across as "old fashioned" and not as contemporary. This is largely due to the firm's history of hiring ex-civil servants to senior positions. Although it helps with networking and sales, it often leads to less innovative approaches to projects and a highly risk averse culture. The whole corporate culture feels like being back in the public sector.

The longstanding practice based model works in London, but causes huge problems in the smaller offices. Stories of 2 PA practices bidding against each other for the same piece of work are not uncommon.

PA advertises itself as a "global firm" but this is a fallacy. It's history of trying to operate in geographies outside of the UK and Scandanavia, especially the Middle East and Australia has been fraught with problems. Centralised corporate control does not provide enough local autonomy to allow the business to develop. Key decision makers at the London headquarters seem to have little understanding of the particular nuances of different local business practices making PA less competitive in these markets. Local HR policies in these international geographies can also be substandard compared with competitors - this frustrates employees transferring to these regions. If you want an international career - don't even contemplate joining PA.

Finally, PA's brand is built mostly on project management, which can make some jobs feel more like being a temp than a consultant. Fewer opportunities for intellectually challenging strategic work than with competitors.

Advice to Senior Management

A tough decision needs to be made about whether PA wants to largely remain a public sector consulting firm for the UK and Denmark or whether it wants to become a truly "global firm' successfully growing and competing in new markets. It will need to take more risk and decentralise in order to achieve this.

Pros

Excellent people - in my time with the company I only found 1 person that I didn't really enjoy working with. Most are very competent.
Reasonable chance to progress, but work/life balance has to be put to one side if you want to be promoted beyond PC grade.
Good level of trust from senior managers - your opinion and experience counts and isn't just ignored when it conflicts with some political agenda with a client.

Cons

Work/life balance is typical of consulting firms I think. Long hours when on client projects.
High expectation of your commitment to non-client work, even when client work is 70hrs a week. I found a constant barrage of requests for me to spend time on proposals/bids, sometimes requiring even more hours than client work.
HR function is OK on the surface and the firm was generous when I had a period of long-term sick leave. However, when there are cutbacks, you're out.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest some of the money that you have sitting around (you know what I mean). Internal IT needs a rethink and continued investment in new sectors would help.

Pros

Lots of interesting public sector work, a few good people, entrepreneurial but unstructured

Cons

Bonus system opaque and overstated (why is it necessary to deduct employers NI ?), only 23 days annual leave compared to 25 â?? 30 elsewhere, limited adherence to Work / Life balance, the partners focus on farming easy public sector jobs rather than focussing on selling into large global corporations, most of the partners are stale - no way these guys would survive at Deloitte

Advice to Senior Management

Either come clean as a public sector consultancy, or sell out to a bigger organisation that will allow us to grow

Pros

Partners are generally good "people managers"; Colleagues with extensive experience; OK work-life balance

Cons

PA is a firm with unclear strategic positioning, poor brand name outside the UK, and zero willingness to take risks or invest in capability building that could grow the firm

Advice to Senior Management

Revise basic strategic assumptions; consider merger or acquisition

Pros

Great People. PA tends to recruit from industry so it is somewhat different from other consultancies who grow their graduates through successive engagements into company clones. There are therefore lots of different opinions and many, many perspectives that can be gleaned for particular issues.

Cons

Career glass ceiling = Principal Consultant. Many practices promote and promote until there is an abundance of PC's. Some are the typical graduate -> consultant and are content free but very good at networking.
Senior Management have all come up through the ranks. Get the feeling that they have read too many management books and that the chairman still has all the influence. Need to get real, take some risks and try and grow the business, currently retreating from all corners of the globe back to an entrenchment in the UK

Advice to Senior Management

Buy another consultancy, get some growth and use the current downturn to your benefit rather than trying to sit it out.

Pros

* great opportunities to work with challanging and interesting clients
* put in front of clients immediately and at high levels of responsibility within projects
* strong group of intelligent, motivated people worldwide

Cons

- If you aren't in one of the bigger offices difficult to network
 - incentives not necessarily aligned to grow the US practice
 - bonuses not what described when joined

Advice to Senior Management

Update your US Strategy to support growth, encourage partners to work together, do more activities to raise brand awareness in the US (on campus MBA interviewing, etc.)

Pros

Interesting people and projects
Generally intelligent people working there
At PC level a fair bit of freedom as to when you come and go

Cons

A lot of talented generalists rather than people who
Senior management, HR and "corporate" are not to be trusted any further than you can throw them
DOn;t join now if you can't get sold on to a job
Need to treat their people more like people and less like units of resource

Advice to Senior Management

Get someone in from outside the form

Pros

- Varied work
- Intelligent colleagues
- Lots of training available for those who want it
- Speedy promotions for those wiling to play the PA system

Cons

- Frequent "feasts and famines" - going for weeks without working on client jobs followed by hectic weeks working on several jobs. This drains energy and self-confidence.
- Male-dominated in some Practices. If female, expect colleagues to assume you are a secretary, and treat you as such.
- Lower ranks are routinely kept away from clients, even when they're the ones contributing the most to client projects.

Advice to Senior Management

Use Plain English in emails.