Waggener Edstrom Worldwide Reviews

Pros

Smart people, Team environment, on the cutting edge of social and digital, passionate and inspiring senior leadership, plenty of growth opportunities - even if you want to change paths

Cons

it's a large company and some politics and red tape are a natural part of that. growing fast and internal processess are lagging a bit.

Advice to Senior Management

take stock of all the new investments and make sure the backend support is in place to form order out of the chaos

Pros

Good benefits; opportunity to work on different parts of Msft business; free pop

Cons

Politics
Need to be in the inner circle to be promoted
Management preaches work/life, but not a reality

Advice to Senior Management

Practice what you preach

Pros

Definitely the place to go if your looking for this balance. Great culture - fun team of people to work with. Alot of recognition is given out when due.

Cons

Favouritism is profound. Too focused on the need for a work life balance. People not pulling their weight equally. Not many people know the brand - even within industry, people are still starting to get to know us.

Advice to Senior Management

There is too much red tape and bureaucracy within the agency internally. This needs to change. Your having a lot of good people leave because of this.

Pros

Waggener Edstrom is a great place to work for name recognition. People respect the agency because Microsoft has been a long-term client. You don't have to say much of anything else to get an interview/job offer when you have Waggener Edstrom or Microsoft on your resume. The salary and benefits are also not too bad.

Cons

The agency will make promises during the hiring process that it will not keep. Work life balance is a favorite buzz phrase and the more they're saying it the more it's not happening (they talk about it all of the time). I accepted a position that was much lower than my experience and skills would have indicated, but unfortunately I did not know anyone at the agency and did not realize that until I was already employed there. From there I experienced endless turnover in management (it appears they placed me on a team with low visibility which I would never have known from the outside looking in...and no one wanted to be on that team). The managers I had consistently took credit for my work, pretended my prior experience wasn't relevant (though it was agency work, it wasn't for Microsoft!), and generally did nothing to help advance me even though the clients liked me. Whenever I asked how I could get the coveted promotion I had been promised in a short period of time on the way in, I received vague responses, no responses, or even anger that I would have the nerve to ask. Another favorite manager tactic seemed to be failure to pass on pertinent client information (job security on their part I suspect), and then comments about the need to be more "strategic" (unfortunately when client information is hidden it is quite difficult to demonstrate your strategic planning skills). Many managers gave just enough information to do all of the tactical work and withheld the rest. I began to doubt myself after a couple of years in this environment, but when I moved on to another agency where I was the only client contact (and those above me had better things to do then hover and make my job more difficult), low and behold I remembered just how good I actually was...and got promoted very quickly. The lesson? The better you are at Waggener Edstrom the more of a threat you present. If you want to work there, go in at the bottom (you won't be a threat and you'll learn a lot) or management (you'll already be "one of them"), but stay away from the middle.

Advice to Senior Management

Sync up with your human resources team and find out what they are promising new hires. Remember high turnover is expensive (it might eventually effect your bonus!) and the turnover is higher when you mentally abuse your employees.

Pros

Expansive in-house research, digital and new media resources and expertise makes it a great place to learn on the cutting edge.

Cons

Welcome to the land of fife-doms. Fear of internal competition seriously dampens knowledge sharing. In a place where senior leadership is incredibly out of touch with the folks who are running the day to day business, it's easy to be overlooked.

Advice to Senior Management

Shed some of the long-timers who make little visible contribution. Encourage a culture of collaboration that will help all boats rise with the tide.

Pros

- Very reputable company
- Strong committment to high quality and client negotiation
- Great experience on a wide-range of activities (but not accounts)

Cons

- No work/life balance - even though it's preached about, it's not practiced at all or fully supported
- Too much attention to politics regarding promotions, not enough on hard work
- Anyone without a cheerleader-esque, type A personality need not apply
- Compensation doesn't match what you put into work
- While possibly good at actual work, people put into management positions with little experience or training, resulting in poor guidance and disgruntled employees
- Very little opportunity to grow outside of primary account
- Clients can be...very...difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Appreciate your employees. Encourage positive feedback, ample compensation, discourage rampant politics and allow employees to have a life outside of their 9 hour days without feeling like they're limiting their career.

Pros

Provides insight into public relations work
Creative people are present
Company hires smart people
Fun atmosphere

Cons

Hiring promises do not meet actual work environment
Focus is often solely based on client satisfaction rather than actual public relations
Promotions and recognition more dependent on personal relationships rather than results
Hours limit ability for personal life

Advice to Senior Management

Start looking at the utilization of hours; it's not sustainable in the long-term
Realize who is doing a share of the work
Management present, leadership often absent
Cost of digital innovation is completely overpriced

Pros

- Some scope for international travel especially the US International projects
- Large agency experience
- Some smart processes
- Get to work with some smart people

Cons

- Leaders need to lead, you would hardly see some of the senior management team in the office much of the time
- Work | life balance
- External image of the agency
- Loss of a number of smart people
- Culture of fear
- You can be better paid elsewhere
- Very American in many ways

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more time in the office. Stop over-promising to clients. Work out what you actually want to be as a business.

Pros

Encourages autonomy and enterprise.
Capable Director for Studio D Asia that will groom talent.
Groundbreaking work for emerging digital PR sector.
Friendly team.
Culture of excellence.

Cons

Constantly changing technological environment.
At the mercy of emerging communication technologies.
Lack of breath due to focus on tech clients.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote more integration between traditional and digital departments.
In order to maintain market leadership, keep up with competitor news now that others are catching up to digital PR work.

Pros

Opportunity to learn about the dynamics of large company operations.
Contact with big-name clients although 90% of that time will be with Microsoft (of course).
Competitive compensation packages for mid to senior roles.

Cons

No work life balance. Expect to work 60-70 hours a week (yes I am serious, that is not a typo) on a regular basis without overtime pay.
Fairly common to find incompetent managers at all levels who gain positions through favors and politics rather than by experience or competency. Ivory-tower mentality of management, that speaks loudly but takes action very slowly and with poor planning.
PR applied to its own employees beyond reason.
Very few opportunities for advancement if you are not a management "pet".
Little to no diversity of thought is allowed (or more specifically innovation is talked about constantly but the end result is more often lots of the same as before).
Extremely limited cultural diversity throughout-even for the region.
Boring offices best termed "call-center" layout depending on region.
Collaboration is virtually nonexistent throughout teams, often due to everyone being completely over-worked.
More of an also-ran agency compared to leading companies in the same space.
Extremely high turnover rate, expect to see up to 50% of your team leave every year. This tends to create an "old veteran" mentality for those that are able to tough it out which then creates specific cliques of "survivors". In other words...why bother getting to know someone if they are likely to not be there in a few months?

Advice to Senior Management

Be more connected to "the little people" that execute the large percentage of work accomplished on the ground. Be more open minded to diverse backgrounds of education and professional experience. Demonstrate through action and less "fluff" talk.