Synovate Reviews

Pros

+ Less bureaucracy
+ Generally flexible working environment but this highly depends on your immediate superior

Cons

- Very high turnover
- Poor / non-existent increaments
- Lack of direction from both global and local management. Lots of fancy promises and vague set, but little in the way of clear numerical targets that all employees know. i.e. the MD's reason for freezing increments for 2011 was because of poor financial standing, and that the local team must match last year's revenue. But what was this figure? How far off are we? None of the staff knows. Everything is just too vague, lack of numbers. Which odd given that this is a market research company, where numbers dominate our work.

Pros

The are being sold soon to IPSOS. When it was Marketfacts it was a fantastic company but was aquired by Aegis and turned into Synovate.

Cons

Senior Management does not have a research background so process and quality are not a priority. It's not focused on the customer.

Pros

Work/Life Balance (dependent on group) - The good sign is you 're pretty much free to come and go as you please, the bad news is you're still going to be working 60+ hours a week
Global
Some very smart people
Decent vacation package, mediocre health benefits

Cons

*Training is abysmal - You are given work to do with NO supervision. Your boss/other employee then corrects it and you learn nothing. It's a sink or swim environment and you're unlikely to get much help even when you ask for it. (I ALWAYS ask for help and the typical response is either "In a little bit," or "Just do it and I'll look it over later.").The training they do provide is far too basic and does nothing to prepare an employee for the complexity they will inevitably face in this job. Most people in this company have been here for YEARS. The reason they're losing so many young people is because they're not taking the time to train them. This isn't an easy job. It takes a lot of skill. If you're not going to take the time to train your employees, then you should start hiring only those with an abundance of experience.

*Senior Management is a joke - They promise dates (e.g., pay raises) that day comes and goes and you don't hear anything for a week. The company is on the verge of being sold and in the past two months the CEO of North American has emailed ONCE to talk about it.

*Career Development is non existent - More than likely your boss isn't going to be a good boss. They're overworked and have no time to train you or help you in your career. I have been here 5 months and not ONCE has anyone taken the time to talk to me about career development. You have "goals" but they are arbitrary and shared across-the-board. There is no focus on personal development.

*Focus on hiring revenue generators - No joke - Emails have been sent from senior management saying their #1 goal is to hire people to make the company money. I know, a company's goal is to make money. Why is this a con? Because they're not hiring the people who actually do the work (the rank-and-file employees). Hiring VPs and SVPs to drum up business is awesome, but all that is happening is that the current employees are having their work pile up on them. Long hours are inevitable (especially in my group) and there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

Advice to Senior Management

*Stop making promises you can't keep

*Keep in mind it's the project managers and operational people that are actually getting these studies done.

*Training, training, training, and training.

Pros

Benefits
People are nice
Casual work enviornment and dress

Cons

Absolutely no work life/balance. People quit and they don't replace that person so they can save money. They distribute that person's work among existing employees or dump it all on one person. Their philosophy is - be happy that you have a job in this economy.

Working from home is frowned upon.

Absolutely NO training for employees at all. I've never seen this at any company.

The layoffs keep coming. Management tells employees in cofee talk sessions that here will be no more layoffs. Then in 2 weeks, 3 more people are laid off.

They are all about the bottom line revenue numbers - making sure they showing a profit (and not a decline in revenue). They will get their anyway the have to and it shows.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to what they employees actually say in the annual employee reviews and do something about the issues.

Better communication. Senior management is told the important stuff and it never gets trickled down.

Pros

delivers to clients with up to date global market research.
Continues to make organizational changes which sometimes don't make sense.
Investing in reducing rework.
Expanding the IS function.

Cons

Lack of communication from senior management to employees
Inability to make timely decisions that impact employees
Doesn't deliver on due dates to employees
Inconsistent decision making process
Career progression isn't consistent ro documented.
No bonus program for rank and file employees bust ask to work longer and smarter.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep commitments to employees
Improve communication to employees
Pay employees who perform
Remove legacy business unit heads

Pros

People in office are generally friendly
Various groups working with a variety of companies across many industries
Nice and open workplace - no cubicles

Cons

Very difficult to move up or around in organization - you might be promoted but it's rare to move up in the company to a senior/management role; seems like they do more external hiring to fulfil senior positions instead of investing in junior employees
Little transparency across teams/groups - even after being there for awhile I still had no idea what other teams really did or had a general sense of cohesiveness across organization; senior management seemed to gather frequently but little information was passed down
Long hours, compensation not competitive, marginal bonus payouts, and very few perks overall

Advice to Senior Management

The general sentiment is that senior leaders do not make an effort to invest in/nurture/appreciate more junior employees. It seems that they only care about the "bottomline" and not whether people are content or if they'll even stay in the long run, which inevitably they do not.

Pros

Great people from middle management on down. Great location in downtown Chicago.

Cons

Upper management outright lies about plans. There seems to be no direction to anything. Training means someone throws something on your desk and you sink or swim. Stability is gone and morale is low with the new business strategy. Will be losing a lot of great people with good experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Change is good when a clear direction is given. Change for the sake of change is not.

Pros

Location was easily accessible. Open office atmosphere. Clear aspiration to improve processes.

Cons

Cooperation between departments needs to improve.

Pros

friendly environment, good training, friendly culture, try their best to improve communication with employees, working life balance depends on you and your team

Cons

too much politics, depends on who you know for promotions and pay rise, need to work very long hours to be recognized

Advice to Senior Management

Communication between employees and management is very important and should be more promoted; also promotions and pay rise process should be a bit more transparent

Pros

Can learn a lot;
Can have a lot of opportunities to be exposed to clients of all levels.
Multi-culture working environment

Cons

Working hours are too long;
Project management is not good
Timing is not good
After a while, researchers turn into report producers

Advice to Senior Management

More training for managers from mid-level up
More training for all employees on project management
Better overlooking projects, don't let researchers do all the jobs