Waggener Edstrom Worldwide Reviews

Pros

Great people
Good compensation
Work life balance
Strong ability for growth
The talent doing the actual work is very high.

Cons

Dishonesty at the executive level
Lots of cat fights
Lots of Hugs and Half truths
The digital arm of Waggener Edstrom has not hit a stride

Advice to Senior Management

Lots of opportunities are lost by not nurturing cross team collaboration. Spend more time building partnerships with global offices and employees.

Pros

tons of opportunity, your growth is in your own hands

Cons

pressure to perform and meet many, many business metrics including client satisfaction

Pros

Waggener Edstrom has smart, engaged management that approached clients with strategic, value-added ideas, knows how to manage employees and cares about giving back to the community and to the world.
Melissa Waggener is visionary and a strategic asset
Pam Edstrom is brilliant
It's a privately-held firm, which is an advantage
Clients respect and listen to their account teams

Cons

The only downside is that the company is not more well-known in the industry and with potential clients. Waggener Edstrom has made great strides in this area and has a strong marketing team that is getting the message out.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to build in the financial focus without losing the employee orientation and goal for developing employees and great managers within the company. It's what makes the Waggener Edstrom stand out from the rest.

Pros

The salary and benefits are great in my experience, the office is nice, and an effort is made to make employees feel welcome. Infrastructure teams offer scheduling flexibility (particularly to working mothers). Many great co-workers. Looks wonderful on a resume (interviewers nearly always mention it in a positive light). Dynamite internship program. Great place for the young single go-getter "rock star" to climb the corporate ladder relatively quickly.

Hours provided to volunteer, and many in-house events such as health fairs, etc.

Cons

The biggest and most glaring is a lack of work-life balance, and inflexible scheduling. All teams claim to be the exception to the rule in the interview process, but the reality (particularly on the MS account teams, which is most of the agency) is that the workload is consistently such that a team member can't properly accomplish their assigned tasks without putting in 60-70 hours per week. It wasn't unusual to see multiple team members still working away at 6:30 or 7 pm or even later, and then leave to go home and work more on their laptop.

The leadership tends to be out of touch. Example: One set of VPs "gifted" one of the account divisions with half-day Fridays for a month, "provided all work had been completed", only to be met with snickers from all, who knew there was no way all work could be completed even in a full week. The VPs left at noon to "Set the example" each Friday--everyone else continued until all hours as normal.

Woeful lack of understanding of true integrated digital communications. Their unwavering commitment to the old ways of PR (leadership is comprised of 20 year veterans, account teams of recent U of O grads) and to superfluous amounts of rigid process keep them from making real impact in many cases. This is particularly detrimental given their tech focus, where the competition is often faster and nimbler.

Infrastructure teams are much less glamorous, less often in the spotlight, but also offer much better work life balance. Those teams seem happier and healthier than the account teams, and would recommend them much more readily. Also MUCH more flexibility in scheduling there.

If cheery verbal encouragement and a good financial/benefit bottom line are worth 60 hours of your week, you can grow here quickly and effectively. Otherwise, I personally recommend you look elsewhere to find an agency where overtime is the exception, leadership is willing to invest in the mid-levels as much as the interns, and big ideas are welcomed with open arms.

Advice to Senior Management

The nice facilities, great benefits and verbal overtures about how much WE values its employees make for a great entrance to the agency. The leadership seems to really believe in these ideals, its just that they just never seem to realize that the values are only being lived out in a verbal fantasy world. In reality, overworked talent gets burned out, underappreciated, overloaded, over-critiqued, looked over, and so on. When each new wave of once-eager talent suddenly and unceremoniously departs, management never seems to question why or attempt to curb the tide. Please start to question it--ask why people are willing to leave a job with a good salary in this economy, even if the person tells you they just "found another opportunity". They may just feel too unappreciated. stifled, or insignificant to tell you the truth on their way out.

Also,

-reduce the excessive attention to process over impact, you're wasting talent and hundreds of hours on needless briefings, re-caps, meetings about meetings, etc.
-learn the fundamentals of true digital communications , and then lead with them. You have the size and resources to compete with the big agencies, if you are willing to truly innovate.
-don't let your mid-level people get lost in the fray. They are some of your strongest talent. If you had a way to develop and invest in them as much as the interns, your retention would go up. VPs and Interns are largely the only ones with exposure to our founders, for example. Promote them more--recognize them more, rather than only remembering to meet with them when there's a new project to drop on them or when they are being reviewed.
-re-vamp the annual company meeting. It's not helpful in its current form. We want to meet other teams, interact with top leadership, get REAL answers (not PR answers), and dream together. We don't care if it's messy--but it should have more real substance.

Pros

Work from home options. Vacation time. Health Benefits. You are able to work with one of the largest clients in the world.

Cons

Too many to list. Management needs a serious reality check. Most senior leadership talks a big game and rarely delivers.Take a look at the failed Studio D project. It was once one of the coolest things about the agency, but management drove it straight into the ground. Truly unfortunate. There are too many hands in the pot at any given time. Recognition is rarely given. If you truly want to start your career off in PR, it's better to go to Weber or Edelman.

Advice to Senior Management

Drop the ivory tower attitudes. Cut senior leadership back 50%. Enable your employees to do the best job they can do and recognize the hard work.

Pros

Great people, lots of opportunity for advancement, great benefits including 4 weeks paid time off, sabbatical program, innovative and collaborative culture

Cons

Depending on who your manager is and how the leadership of the team values work/life balance, employees can sometime have differing experiences.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to keep employees in the loop regarding the direction of the company and how the agency is committed to keep employees inspired. Stellar employees need to be reminded that the agency cares about their career and their future.

Pros

The work we do, clients we have, flexibility that most teams offer, great benefits, and we all work hard and are very proud of what we do. Overall, the people are what are the best aspect of Waggener Edstrom, making and building new relationships on a daily basis that opens many doors to a variety of opportunities.

There is also a lot of collaboration at the agency which is always a great thing as you never know what you can learn from other people's perspectives. It's also a fun agency. We work extremely hard but we also take the time to relax, whether that's playing a game of pool or kicking back with those around you and just hanging out.

Also has an amazing internship program. Although not directly connected to it or having partnered with it yet, I'm looking forward to it as they are bringing on some amazing talent!

Cons

Lack of respect at leadership level, but also across some of the account below leadership level; lack of communication from leadership; values not held, especially at the management level; leaders who don't even acknowledge employees in social settings

Advice to Senior Management

Instead of continuing to say you're listening to what your employees are saying, take the time to actually hear them and act on ways to improve the agency. But really do it. Every year is the same - they say it's going to change yet it never does, at least not for the better. Sometimes those at the leadership level seem so disconnected from the real world of the day to day agency life. Also need to hold people accountable for their actions, more so than you do, including your own. Having witnessed agency leaders being extremely verbally disrespectful is one of the most unbearable aspects of the agency. Grow your managers. Lack of experience for those managing others really needs to be looked at. Career Growth - don't stifle your people. Allow everyone in the agency to grow and not shut the door on them when they ask to move onto different responsibilities or positions. Bring back agency wide meetings so that there is actually more interaction between your employees. Have your founders be more visible at the agency, thanking teams for all of the hard work they do - more so those that get overshadowed by more flashy projects/teams. Not being on an infrastructure team but observing all of their most hard work they do they should be recognized much more for what they do. If it weren't for the infrastructure teams, the rest of us wouldn't be here. Discontinue taking away infrastructure resources - they are the ones who need them the most! And it would be helpful to have better business planning as well. Same story every year.

Pros

Excellent benefits, nice offices (even though a cube environment), strong and longstanding commitment to community giving (including paid volunteerism), and robust internship program and international exchange program.

Cons

Notice the recent rash of positive reviews? They may be true but they are also the product of a PR push for boosting employee satisfaction rankings. This is exactly how WE operates: managing perceptions but not truly addressing the real issues. Employees are either brand new, just graduated interns who cycle through the agency and out in 2 years, or are career stalwarts, long-timers with 15+ years. While moving leaders around to manage fundamentally different departments of the company can often bring new ideas, innovation, and energy, more often it is used as a reward rather than a strategic move in response to a business need. Sometimes decisions are swift (like laying off senior members of IT to bring on entry level help desk reps), and other times leadership is paralyzed, not getting rid of bad managers below them who consistently make bad business decisions because it is easier to ignore them or do nothing.

Advice to Senior Management

You are doing many things right, but need to get back to the basics and master those. Business needs to be profitable. Do long-term relationship building with clients; don't just cycle through new accounts. International offices are not for show, they are for business. Make long term strategic goals and stick to them; don't just go through the motions. Bring on external consultants to objectively evaluate leadership, then take their advice. If you get real business leaders in there and you treat the agency as a business instead of a group of friends (some of whom you talk to, others you shun, depending on mood), then you might be surprised at how much real progress and profit is made. Then the story you tell will be the story you live.

Pros

Super interesting work - always a new challenge, never boring.

Waggener Edstrom has excellent benefits for employees. I especially appreciate the open-minded health benefits that give access to alternative care.

Open to having employees work from home several days a week or even full-time. Some peole have alternate schedules as well, having proven themselves. Love the flexibility.

Generous with corporate giving, even offering $ to each employee on request for the charity of their choice.

Cons

Feels like what you give is never enough. If you're not giving a minimum of 110% every day, you're slacking, to the point that frenetic activity wins out over deliberate plans.

Our senior manager is overly optimistic and sets unattainable business goals, which we struggle to meet. It's de-motivating after a while to never feel truly successful.

Work-life balance is hard. For many, the only way to achieve it seems to be to give up on career growth.

Sometimes the intense and demanding nature of the work bleeds over, and one becomes intense and demanding (unpleasant) with others inside and outside of work.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior managers often seem out of touch with reality of life in the trenches. Pay attention, make it safe to provide feedback, and be open to what people are saying. If people keep saying the same thing, maybe it's true.

If we're going to have a bunch of mid-year promotions every year, change to a formal bi-annual review cycle. People feel bad when HR policies don't apply uniformly across the board.

Most of our leadership has good judgment, but a couple of teams are clicquish, starting at the top with SVPs and EVPs. Hold them accountable, and make it clear across the board that sorority-style nastiness, favoritism and homogeneity are not the goal.

Don't let short-sighted up-and-comers chase away great brains with historical/global perspective. Several great thinkers have been marginalized or let go recently.

Pros

Cares about employees and focuses on talent, lots of room to grow. Creativity is encouraged and rewarded. Lots of amazing consumer brands to work on, not just a tech agency anymore.

Cons

Different office environments have different cultures. Senior leadership can reward longevity over competence or ability to change with the times.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage diversity, continue to diversify your portfolio. Speed up your global growth. Outgrow American mentality and become truly global.