Wachovia Reviews

Pros

Decent Pay. I managed a great team within the branch. Good PTO and benefits

Cons

Extremely stressful. Never knew from day to day if you would have call night and what time it would last til. 5-6 conference calls daily minimum. Sometimes there was a call every hour. Constantly taking us out of the branch for meetings. No praise. No motivation. Constantly beat down no matter how good of a job you do. No work/life balance. Rules and "policies" change everyday. Always threatened with being fired or written up. Never satisfied. Calls you on your cell phone before work, after work and sometimes even on your lunch break(in which none of those are comapny paid time). Does not do whats best for the customer. We are forced to push products down peoples throats whether its whats best for them or not. Oh and the emails.....seriously over 200 emails a day...when are we suppose to manage a branch or help customers if we are on email and conference calls all day long.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more professional. Dont change the rules everyday to accomadote your needs and only your needs. Take time to stop and say good job without a....but you still didnt hit this goal...whats your action plan....I have a lot of advice but unfortunately it wont do any good, because "Our opinion does NOT matter" and our voices are never heard. (For those of you who know what Im talking about"

Pros

There are opportunities to make good money if you're at the top of your district in sales.

Cons

The managers don't care about the employees. All that matters is the bottom line.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't only look to promote FLS's who are good at their current role...promote people to FSL's who are good around people, care about people, and can manage well.

Pros

Experience is worth pursuing at Wachovia

Cons

Pay is below your market value and contribution level

Advice to Senior Management

You get what you pay for

Pros

- Lots of locations so easy commute to work most likely
- Solid 401 k program
- Nice people to work with

Cons

As a personal banker you will be forced to make lots of outbound calls to current customers to open more checking and savings accounts. You will also be asked to make outbound calls (cold calls) to customers who do not have any Wachovia accounts at all. If your branch is not busy you will be forced to stay after hours and make extra calls. You will be given an unrealistic set of goals to reach that is a one size fits all incentive program for all personal bankers across the entire company regardless of size or traffic of branches. Only about 12 to15 percent of the people who work as Personal Bankers make commission. if you do make compensation about a quarter of that can be taken away if your stores service scores are below 80% which is on an absolute scale. To get a "good shop" you must get a 5 of 5 as overall performance when the customers who are called regarding the service are able to vote on a 1 to 5 scale (therefore many customers are pleased with service and vote 4 not knowing the consequences). Managers are just there to tell you to get more solutions, they don't do a good job of coaching and don't like to handle customer complaints. As a PB you will be forced to make sales goals and also deal with a lot of customer complaints and service issues. Yet you will be the victim of constant pressure to reach sales goals that most people do not hit. You will receive very little praise if your branch does have a good sales day. The company has extremely high turnover especially in this market. The turnover is not only high at the PB level but also at the manager and district manager positions.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees with more respect and more would stick around.

Change the incentive plan so that it is more reasonable for more people to hit their incentive.

Pros

Decent benefit package. A lot of resources to work with as a Financial Advisor. Back office and support staff very helpful in resolving client issues.

Cons

Terrible technology platform. With every merger, which there have been a lot of, the communication got worse, fees for our clients kept going up and cannibalism among the financial advisors grew rampant.

Advice to Senior Management

Wachovia needs a better and more consistent communication system in place. Brokers always finding out last about changes after clients complain.

Pros

Good time off and 401k matching

Cons

Six day work weeks especially in January's are brutal. Hard time keeping employees so everyone has to work harder.

Advice to Senior Management

People work harder and more successfully if they are happy

Pros

clean office
good location and parking
good benefits

Cons

Salary not commensurate with education and experience
Mangers do not promote satisfaction and cooperation among employees

Advice to Senior Management

Service managers/middle managers do not look after employee concerns; for example,help with transferring vacation hours and PTO hours from prev. year to this year.
Senior management should visit branch offices and encourage/motivate tellers and others.

Pros

Money and benefits were not too bad.

Cons

The back stabbers and gossipers are favored.

Advice to Senior Management

Small chances...almost none...

Pros

They sponsor you in getting your Series 7 and 66 licenses, which are needed for the position.

Cons

Co-workers acted like they were in high school. Some of my co-workers were there for years, and never received a promotion or a raise. Hired me for the Licensed Securities assistant for only $30k per year, but then wante me to take on extra administrative duties.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote professionalism in the workplace. Pay a little more to retain employees.

Pros

Great discounts on banking services and loans. Used to be alot more pros until Wells Fargo took over and ruined a great banking model.

Cons

Was a great place to work until Wells took over. Wells cut the ability to make commission and started getting rid of all highest paid employees and hiring people for half the money. Training went to s@@t too as they only provide new hires with about three weeks of training. Let's just say they get what they paid for as half the new hires either quit or are fired withing the first six months. My clients that get to deal with the "new employees" always complain how incompetent they are. This approach to business does not work, or at least it does not work in affluent market areas as most of the clients started jumping ship as soon as wells started making changes.

Advice to Senior Management

You get what you paid for and it will come back to bite you in the ass. Everyone is leaving because they are afraid of being let go for making too much money.