Synovate Reviews

Pros

Global reach; learning to work with different cultures and business practices;

Cons

lack of emphasis on employee career growth, development and benefits.

Pros

- Opportunity for professional growth if you network!

- Interesting people and fun, multi-cultural work environment.

- Great learning opportunities.

- Flexible work hours

Cons

- Very little training provided.

- Low salaries.

- Poor communication between global teams.

- Too many layers of management.

Advice to Senior Management

- Communication between management and employees needs improvement. Managers need to communicate more effectively with staff.

- More training on project management for employees.

Pros

Friendly people, have made some good friends at this company, nice offices and the benefits are OK, but not the best.

Cons

Upper management need to communicate more with staff at all levels and not just senior staff, also need to pay more attention to what is happening in the work place.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to communicate more will all staff (at all levels not just Senior staff) and pay more attention to staff

Pros

Fast track to learn new skill
Very flexible management
Innovative

Cons

Underpaid
Lack of senior competent management
No HR

Pros

interesting learning opportunities and nice people

Cons

Often long hours, lots of pressure, clients that can be overly demanding and rude, sometimes a lack of internal support

Pros

The amount of vacation time is very generous.

The people there are very nice.

Cons

Hours can be long. Few opportunities for training. Management unwilling to invest in software tools to improve our studies. Very little respect or appreciation from upper management for IT people (Let's just outsource and hire contractors).

Different departments work in Silos. Worked their over 5 years, even after trying to find out, I could learn what other departments existed within the company. Why are there no org charts?

 Mid level management seemed to live in fear of Senior management. Not sure why.

Many layers of management. It took Synovate 8 months to get a system running while a competitor got it done within 6 weeks.

Advice to Senior Management

Devolve power downwards. Let regional managers have more decision making authority.

Pros

Lot of learning and training opportunities. Managers and supervisors give great feedback on performance which helps you improve. Overall It's great place.

Cons

We are understaffed so it does get hectic. During these hectic times, sometimes you don't get to work on the projects that you are good at and like working.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to recognize the employee's strength and cultivate and motivate them on this. Otherwise they are likely to lose great employees.

Pros

A well known company that has strong heritage and decent client base.
Opportunity to fill in a lot of professional and leadership needs among staff.
good work done at director level can pay off as reflecting the positive image of the company

Cons

No vision to create a professional team and workforce
No teamwork - a lot of posing and silent politics
Mid level managers and below are squeezed til they leave
Very high turnover at researcher level
No one is truly happy
Lack of cooperation between various functions - terretorial

Advice to Senior Management

think long term
appreciate people who actually do the work, in word and in a tangible manner
stop ignoring people
move back to the business district

Pros

- Offers an environment that is flexible
- Management is pretty transparent
- The spirit of the teams are youthful

Cons

- Divisions are not very well integrated. Each one operates in silos
- The salary levels are below par
- Dollars drives service quality and not other way.

Advice to Senior Management

It is well understood that bottom line is very critical for business. But, sometimes we need to invest to reap returns.

Pros

the flexible work hours/days they have to choose from.

Cons

there is no type of benefit package.

Advice to Senior Management

keep up the good job they do