Telefónica Europe Reviews in Slough, Berkshire, South East England, England

Current Employee – been working at Telefónica Europe full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Lot’s of opportunity to work on European projects and to move up in your career

Cons – Location of the Slough office.

Advice to Senior Management – Need to be closer to the day to day workings of their teams and understand the stress on the ground.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Telefónica Europe full-time for more than a year

Pros – Employee recognition scheme 'Fan Club' is a good idea.

Cons – Lack of honesty and integrity from immediate management regarding job status

Advice to Senior Management – Examine employees more closely when reorganising, and keep the ones that achieve rather than the ones wuth the sales patter

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Telefónica Europe

Pros – Nice office and amenities.
Ok training
Opportunities to move around (though not necessarily up) and exposure to some new areas-eg financial services, media, health etc

Cons – Used to be v focused on customer insight but has become too commercially driven. Senior management has become quite detatched from the troops. Internal employee satisfaction scores are declining
Teams have been slimmed back so work/life balance suffers.
Marketing Director still fails to motivate and has zero people skills

Advice to Senior Management – Get back to what made you famous. Invest in the new areas more. Re-connect with your people and learn how to motivate them again

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Telefónica Europe

Pros – Great environment, both in terms of the physical environment but also the atmosphere

Very positive focus on Customer Service and satisfaction

The employee experience is genuinely something that they work hard on

Competitive package and great flexible benefits

Cons – Many Line Managers seem to be promoted due to technical abilities or previous experience and don't necessarily have the skills to be great people managers which can impact the employee experience. There is no "induction" for new line managers to help them through this transition

Limited after work social interaction due to campus location (Slough)

Some decisions can take too long and normally involve going far up the LM chain - there's not much confidence in the LM's to make proactive decisions, even if the rhetoric says otherwise

Telefonica own O2 which gives them great financial backing and O2 are positively impacting on Telefonica, however for larger scale projects it can severely impact the pace of decisions.

Significant stakeholder management is needed at all levels to work around the above two points and also the "politics" of cross functional decisions

Advice to Senior Management – Put more focus on Line Manager capability, especially at the point of promotion
Delegate decision making and empower middle managers. Encourage greater risk taking and don't burn people if they get it wrong initially - the rewards are more likely to be greater than the risks.
Ensure expectations are realistic on large scale projects where multiple countries are involved - be open and honest with employees on the comms around this as well - they'll understand

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Telefónica Europe

Pros – -dynamic, lots of intitiatives, strong brand

Cons – -constant restructures (often once a year now), where you have to reapply for your own job or another in the org
-fairly minimal opportunity for growth. most people could be there for 10 years an not move up a grade
-quite penny pinching in benefits: eroding them slightly each year, whilst inflation is going up all the time

Advice to Senior Management – people want to grow and develop and not just stay at the same level year after year, and have to reapply for their own job year after year. with constant restructuring of what's just been restructured. and stop reducing the benefits in real terms from year to year (!)

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Telefónica Europe

Pros – - Good working environment
- Good senior management communications
- Flexible working
- Good feedback on performance
- Opportunities for development and career progression

Cons – - Poor middle management
- Insufficient sharing of ideas and opportunities
- Process bound, leading to slow IT delivery
- Too many overseers with little added value
- Duplication of people, processes, costs across the European company

Advice to Senior Management – - Take a pan European view to IT and Shared Services
- Standardise and eliminate duplication
- State clear manageemnt goals and reward based on actual delivery of benefits
- Eliminate initiatives which do not meet stated goals

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Telefónica Europe

Pros – Nice people.
Flexible working is good.
Pay lip-service towards change and inovative ways of working.
Will be better when all workers in Slough are in one building

Cons – Lots of travelling between sites ( Slough , Leeds, Preston Brook)
Outsourcing has left little knowledge of some systems within the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Al projects are assessed on the basis of very short term financial goals - a longer term view should be taken.

Current Employee – been working at Telefónica Europe

Pros – Pride in the company, brand of the company (it's well known), discounts and priority tickets for the O2.

Cons – Career progression is very limited, promotion for people internally doesn't happen enough and when it does, pay increases are limited to 5%

Advice to Senior Management – Trust your existing people more

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend