Pros

Good benefits such as 401K matching, good health coverage, flex time. Also many discounts such as mobile phone service, banking, etc.

Cons

Poor working conditions including working past midnight, being denied lunch or dinner, working without heating or air conditioning, working more than 7 days in a row. The work week is supposedly 35 hours, but even if one is coerced into working 70 hours a week, there is no overtime pay, no bonus, no raise, and no thank you.

The use of many short-term employees is expensive and drains valuable time. There is no training for new employees and many projects run into roadblocks as a result of inexperienced individuals who, through no fault of their own, cannot do what is expected of them.

Advice to Senior Management

The recent lack of planning (and the reason why so many temps are hired at the last minute before a deadline) has caused such a rush on projects that product quality has dropped drastically. I question how long this business practice is sustainable.

Pros

- great people and culture
- respectful managers and supervisors
- understanding co-workers
- fun environment
- multiple locations and offices

Cons

- long hours
- not enough pay for the amount of work and effort
- not the best location in town

Advice to Senior Management

- focus more on productivity
- provide other salary options
- consider the suggestions and recommendations of the hourly associates

Pros

Great benefits, time off, high pay and bonus for the area, come and go as you want. They offer summer hours, tuition reimbursement and soft skill training. Great place for working mothers; flex time, mothers rooms, work from home, etc.

Cons

Sadly, management is incompetent and there is no room for movement or advancement. Hiring is often from the outside instead of providing opportunity to employees. Employee morale is extremely low in some areas due to a political environment that is heavy with top level managers who do not encourage or assist employee growth. Single people are discriminated against by having to pick up the slack of those who have families and need to leave early, come in late, work from home with flexible schedules/short hours. No accountability on employees to get a job done right or at all and no accountability from management to change this. HR is there for management, not the employees. You will get face time to discuss issues but nothing will come of it and you will probably not receive a follow up. Offensive language is frequently used and not considered an issue which again results in poor morale and a too casual atmosphere. People with strong skills are unchallenged and usually become employed elsewhere because of these issues.

Advice to Senior Management

Management requires a clean sweep if this company is going to make it. Management also needs to be seriously trimmed. There are people still working who are no longer productive or adding value. Incompetence and bad behavior are tolerated and at times rewarded which sends a negative message to employees who work hard and want to advance their own careers.

Pros

Very good hours, flexible schedule, great coworkers, great energy.

Cons

Salary is minimal (in my opinion)

Advice to Senior Management

Consider rewarding employees that are valuable assets with more competitive salaries. Fact is, Pearson is a terrific place to work. However, its a known fact that the salaries aren't competitive.

Pros

Big company, lots of good benefits

Cons

Departments seem to work independently of one another. Some work is never finished properly. Lots of gossip and politics.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire some of the people that have been there forever -- they are no longer cutitng edge and are just eating up the company's resources.

Pros

Pearson Educaton has a great way of motivating all sales and marketing employees. They hold fantastic sales meetings in gorgeous locales.. They also have great benefits, fantastic pension plan (4.5% of pay is put into an account plus they match what you put in). Their senior managers are very strong and listen to all employees. No egos there. There is also not a lot a lot of bureaucracy. This company is a true meritocracy.

Cons

The pay is low for the amount of hours required to do a successful job. That being said, there are a lot of intrinsic rewards offered such as praise, awards, team work that go with working there.

Advice to Senior Management

Get off the profit sharing plan. It is too confusing to be motivating and many mid level managers do not have that much say over profit levels.

Pros

location is great since you are right by the highway

Cons

management is quite poor. that's an area that desperately needs improvement

Advice to Senior Management

learn to treat help and support your staff better. they will respect you more and be more productive

Pros

Very flexible work hours and work/life balance. Summer hours: half-day Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Ability to work from home for some. Tuition reimbursement for applicable higher education courses. The company continues to do well despite the country's economy. Management provides quality feedback.

Cons

Advancement/promotion seems difficult to achieve. The raise process for me was prolonged, despite consistantly excellent reviews, quality work, and respect from managment. There's a lot of red tape. There often doesn't seem to be enough employees--there's a lot of pressure to produce a large quantity of work (at a high quality of course) and not a lot of help to do so. Despite the success of the company, they're not always forthcoming about the likliness of downsizing. Constant reorganization seems redundant and wasteful. Very little communcation between the many groups/businesses, despite an excellent opportunity to share products and knowledge.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be helpful to communicate with lower-level employees more often, so they're more aware of how and why the company is functioning. Reward employees for good work! Positive feedback is nice, but it's not enough--employees need compensatory rewards when pay is already low to average.

Pros

A comprehensive benefits package, OK compensation (sucks, but it's competitive with other companies in this market), decent people (for the most part).

Cons

No room for promotion after a certain point.
Communication among departments is virtually non-existent.
Though most people there are pleasant to work with, there are some rather incompetent/lazy people who screw up time and again without penalty while you're left to pick up the slack.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward performance over seniority, the current system breeds laziness and an unpleasant workplace.

Pros

In a way, you make the experience what you want, if you're a go-getter and aggressive and fit in. Sometimes management is very human, but now when it comes to work.

Cons

If you just do a great job alone, you'll probably be taken advantage of and burn out. The management is out of touch with what goes on every day and the resources needed to accomplish a goal. The schedules are made very unrealistic then slowed down tremendously through bureaucracy, inefficiency, and old-fashioned methods. Downsizing when successful and trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of hardworking employees who care while the rest skate by is bad. The pay is terrible, nobody can define processes or can make decisions, and the work is uncreative and unrewarding.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop squeezing schedules and cutting budgets when a previous formula was very successful. Stop recommending more meetings and more people to look at an easily solvable problem. Take the time to get to know the people who do the actual work and what they go through. Most importantly, take the time to train people you're trying to promote to more success and responsibility instead of throwing them to the sharks and letting them burn out.