TELUS Reviews in Vancouver, BC Area

Pros

- easy to get hired (interviews are pretty dumb)
- decent salary
- decent benefits

Cons

I've worked at 6 other companies before coming to TELUS and this company has the worst form of all kinds of office politics and corporate bureaucracy. Starting from the CEO (being the most incompetent), the company has blown up billions of dollars and failed many many projects (e.g. CRM, and TV). I can't think of any project that they took on that actually completed and became successful. I've seen many good managers/directors got fired because of the politics, and seen HR recruiters promoted to manage a team of engineers. I've seen many disgruntled colleagues who left the company, got better jobs elsewhere and are much happier now. I think TELUS really needs a new CEO and a new direction - if it's managed the same way as it was back in 1980, you know it's not going to be around for very long.

Advice to Senior Management

Hopeless

Pros

Flexible workstyle, telecommuting via remote PC/phone/web conferencing.
Seems to provide middle management career development opportunities yet requires a lot of patience.
Structured performance measurement system.

Cons

Distributed teams with very limited ability to meet in person.
Blanket decisions to save on travel budgets and other things affect productivity.
Sales organization pampered, lacks professionalism and depth.
Process heavy, does nor promote innovation.
Deterioration of compensation - limited pay raises, weaker benefits

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on high performing portfolios and professionals.
Team members are part of the solution or part of the problem - keep the former, get rid of the latter
Reward innovation.

Pros

great career pathing; team members/managers; Always opportunities to move around in your career within the organization; the excitement of building new technologies

Cons

many middle level managers and higher do not have much experience and don't listen to those they support (even the young ones that have been there longer!);

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your frontline managers more; anytime there is a problem with engagement, more is put on the frontline managers but the employees are not dis-engaged with their managers, it's the overall culture

Pros

Great people, good growth opportunities, flexibility. If you have the drive to succeed, you will, but you have to own your career.

Cons

If you want to coast, you can. It's not a very innovative company at heart, but that seems to be slowly changing.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage more innovation and take more risk. Pay is a substantial issue within the company and needs to be addressed.

Pros

union environment
specific work hours
work location

Cons

work is being outsourced to India and other locations

Advice to Senior Management

your "future is friendly" marketing campaign is completely opposite to how you treat your employees. You need to stop looking for an excuse to cut jobs.

Pros

The benefits are decent, TELUS understands that the customers' expectations are not always realistic. The hours are fair, are it can be a dynamic atmosphere with telecom always changing.

Cons

Completely incompetent middle/ upper management -- they are more focused on the Share Holder than on the actual customer. Our systems/ processes are so outdated that of course our targets are not being met. Managements' response to everything tends to be pointing fingers to the frontlines and squeezing more out of them for less. Frontline employees are micromanaged to unthinkable levels (i.e. Call Monitoring statistics are unrealistic); Management has this ideal that your results are never good enough. All the outsourcing to the Philippines creates a demoralizing work environment; Management consistently lies that our jobs are safe when they aren't. Outsourced work is often messed up (80% of the time), customers are not happy, and those whose jobs haven't been oursourced are consistently fixing errors, dealing with angry customers and dealing with convoluted processes that Analysts unfamiliar to the frontlines keep dishing out to us. Career-pathing seems almost non-existant at this company as Managers are trying to keep their jobs, and those in BU positions are constantly reminded that your job is expendable. Not a very ethical workplace whatsoever! Those who do the grunt-work are constantly disregarded.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the lower echelons of the company. Some of us have been here for years and years and we work ourselves to death to try to make things work. We fondly remember a TELUS that actually cared for the customer, the community, and the team member, but it increasingly shows that all that TELUS Management cares about is the ShareHolder. That is pretty sad. I used to love TELUS and proudly sprite the TELUS logo. Now I hide from it as much as possible; everybody you talk to tells you their horror stories at TELUS; you can't even go to a house party without someone begging to tell you about their horror-stories. If Upper Management thinks this is untrue, they must all live on other planets. You keep saying you want to create simplified processes, engaged team members, and happy customers... Stop the outsourcing, give us better systems, and stop treating the local team members like they are expendable. Finally, for far-too long, there has been a culture of "no-fault" -- screw ups everywhere, with little to no repercussions behind it -- ensure the ones who keep messing up are reprimanded (3 strikes and your fired), and give those who constantly do things right a promotion -- holding people back is only going to lead to negative labour churn. As it stands right now, if I left TELUS, I will switch all my services to another local service provider... It's sad to say that, but I am all-too familiar with the lack of caring on all levels, that I just cannot bear to subject myself to that without the internal contacts I currently have access to. But, this is what one expects from a Leadership Team stuck in their monopolistic ways... but you will manage to blame the front line team members for the downfall of TELUS -- you always do.

Pros

One of the bigger companies to work at in the province. Good if you're in the leadership development program; hosed if you're not.

Cons

Management believes company is better than it actually is. Quick to fire large groups of people without thinking about the future.

Advice to Senior Management

Things seem a bit too easy for the company in Western Canada. Try to be more innovative and actually care about your employees.

Pros

good benefits (even though they've been cutting them back), as well as great vacation

Cons

greedy executives have frozen salaries, promotions. they've even cut our "bonuses"
compensation difference between "top" performer and lowest performer is $226 - pathetic given how much extra work is required to be a "top" performer.
senior leadership has ADHD - can't stick with one thing long enough to see results.

Advice to Senior Management

Merge with Bell and have Cope take over - senior leadership is terrible

Pros

Ample room for growth and a plethora of different types of roles available.

Cons

Too slow to implement new ideas - there is not enough of a priority for blue ocean innovation. Risk y/untested ideas always seem to get de-prioritized. There is also still too much bureaucracy, especially when it comes to HR.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce red tape and provide transparency with HR and compensation management, focus on blue ocean innovation and allow new/risky ideas to be trialled.

Pros

Fun environment, opportunity for growth, support for education/growth (you can take courses and there are lots of internal learning opportunities), getting a blackberry device for work, TELUS service discount, flexible work environment. The people are also really great, and it's a positive work environment. Also I believe that if you work hard, in management at least, you will be promoted. You can definitely move your way up the chain in the company.

Cons

Budget cuts (however this is probably happening at 99% of other large companies right now), poor communication of negative news company wide, recognition system isn't great, disorganized structure (again due to the company wide cuts)

Advice to Senior Management

Define priorities better, improve gating processes