State Street Reviews in Kansas City, MO Area

Pros

Speaking for the office in Kansas City, this is a good place to begin a financial career at an entry level. The benefits (insurances, vacation, tuition reimbursement) are in line with most similar companies. The people overall are good to work with.

Cons

For entry level employees, there is paid overtime, which is a great benefit. For managers and above, overtime is not paid, but is definitely required. The demoralizing thing about it is that various groups have differing work hours. There are some groups that never work over 40 hours a week, whereas there are many others that work 50+ hours weekly, which has caused some rifts in the groups. Communication is also a major shortfall, whether it is communicating new ideas or tools, which groups tend to have to discover on their own, or from upper management discussing layoffs. The latest round of layoffs was announced in one sentence the middle of a multi-paragraph e-mail from the CEO.

Advice to Senior Management

1) Honesty goes a long way in interviews - do not allow a position to be sold as a 40 hour/week position if it is not.
2) The shareholder is obviously important, but not the only aspect of the company.
3) Equality is important to keep workers happy. If one person continually is working 55 hours a week while watching others in a different group leave every day on time, something is amiss.

Pros

Good benefits. Good place to start out if you don't stay too long.

Cons

They are cutting salaries and laying people off. Also making jobs more rote.

Advice to Senior Management

Total focus on the immediate bottom line will destroy a company long term.

Pros

clean, modern building and a young workforce

Cons

people were expressionless and looked at you weird when you say 'hello'

Advice to Senior Management

give employees a chance to have a solid career path from day 1

Pros

fairly good training and a good place to start a career. they will pay for your advanced education if you can show it is in line with your career path.

Cons

compensation is on the low end for the industry and much of the work is merely review and can easily be shipped abroad.

Advice to Senior Management

The review process by managers needs to be re-examined and there have to be ways to decrease the amount of time wasted by employees.

Pros

State Street has a good corporate culture and my favorite part about my job is the people that I work with. Also, the benefits are currently good.

Cons

The company is evolving into centralized processing i.e. mindless data entry with little variety in your day to day work. I cannot see how they expect to still require a degree for entry level positions in the future.

Advice to Senior Management

If you can't rely on your unit heads to distribute information in a timely manner than it should be done to everyone at once. The flow of information is very uneven and this leads to gossip and low morale.

Pros

young people and great benefits

Cons

The pay is low and this makes the overall company complain about their income.

Advice to Senior Management

Raise wages to keep employees and reduce turnover.

Pros

Some of the best benefits out there. A fantastic 401K match and solid choices for benefits. The environment isn't terrible and they used to sponsor several moral boosting events.

Cons

The work is boring and mind numbing. It just repeats itself in cycles. You are either way to busy or literally doing nothing. Management doesn't seem to want to help employees advance. Most managers are great reviewers but terrible leaders. Work life balance is OK. Worst thing is probably the pay. There is a lot of turnover for a reason. When the market turns around and opportunities become available this company better look out and figure out a way to retain key employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Be leaders and help everyone below you advance. There are way too many different ways to do the same thing. Standardize the way things are done and become way more efficient.

Pros

The people that work at State Street are great and they have great benefits. It can be a fun place to work depending on which client you work for.

Cons

*Pay doesn't compare to other companies

Advice to Senior Management

Look for better ways to improve employee morale. Also, the current recognition program needs to change. Most employees would want more compensation instead of prizes when recognized.

Pros

The corporate culture
Benefits
always new activities to be involved in
Flexible work schedule - depending on department

Cons

Salary and charging to park in the parking garage-these are the main cons I can think of.

Advice to Senior Management

Have more of an open door policy and make sure the lines of communication are always open between you and your employees

Pros

I must say that the management team in KC really loves their people, and many make you feel like you’re part of a family; they’re just under Boston’s thumb. Or hammer.

Benefits are as good as it gets. Schedules truly are flexible (though some departments would disagree), and is truly a great aspect of the company.

The people are, for the most part, a friendly bunch. Albeit 9 out of 10 care more about continuing college lifestyles, happy hours, eating, or pushing out children, than they care about a career in finance. Then again, maybe complacency has set in after a year or two of monthly bills wiping out take-home pay.

There will be ~500 new jobs added to KC by 2012; which is great! Right up until they dropped the pay-cut bomb.

Another review mentioned no incentive compensation -- a new rewards program has begun which is driven by manager and peer-feedback. Think $25 gift card to Best Buy.

Cons

I like to think of STT Kansas City as, ‘The Farm’. My realization has been that we are equivalent to cheap-labor (ie India) from the perspective of a C-level executive. Strategy: hire a boat load of new grads, pay em next to nothing, see what sticks.

Places like Kansas City are saturated with State-educated business majors; whom are generally well-educated, with a certain cross-section of true talent. Nonetheless, we are readily available at bargain basement discount. I liken it to a ZIRP-directed discount window; and we now have what I would define as the new blue collar. I feel as if we’ve been deceived by our local education systems all along. Big surprise.

Management recently disclosed decreasing the starting salary of new hires and internal promotions. From an already meager base of $32k, this is nothing short of oppressive. 32k is lower than the BLS average earnings for the last 30 years. All hail Boston, you should congratulate yourself and high-five the shareholders. [Note: One of the key points to STT’s new corporate strategy is to 'attract and retain talent'. Right.]

I’ve had to work a part-time job for the last year in order to live comfortably and save a few bucks every month. Consider that I do not drive, walk to work, wear clothes I've had for years, and hardly have a social life due to lack of funds and time. Etc.

Another major problem I’ve personally encountered: the older folks won’t pursue promotions, so the positions a level-2 levels above entry that should be turned-over regularly to upcoming talent, aren’t. The talent gets hired away to someone like Cerner who pays market wage. There could be way more opportunity for promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire selectively (which they have been lately) and the pay market wage (even $35k would be a huge relief). Most operations could survive with a 30% reduction to entry-level positions. Maybe more. If you take into account the higher caliber talent ‘attracted & retained’ at a competitive salary, so much more could be accomplished. Such a simple solution would weed out those who can’t keep up, those who don’t want to be in a competitive job-market, increase employee satisfaction (not to mention client-satisfaction!!), and reduce attrition. What gives?