Mercer Reviews

Pros

Mercer was always looking for ways to support employees and it came from top leadership. Anything from being proactive to tell employees to work from home during inclement weather to asking managers if there were any employees who were feeling strained. Also held regular fun events/activities.

Cons

For me the location and commute was the biggest con, since my location as next to a toll road and attempting to take any route other than the toll road added considerable time to my commute. Worth the inconvenience to work at a great company and with fantastic team members.

Pros

Flexibility. The corporate really cares about their employees.

Cons

Management is an issue here. Managers are taking too much responsibilities and show no interest in helping their employees. Some managers are lack of humanistic management skills. Manager avoided to discuss any career development suggestions though it was required by the corporate to have those conversations with your employees. They simply do not appreciate their hard working staffs (no promotions, no raise, but they gave you excellent feedback and said you are beyond/on track, which is funny). I had seen some hard working and talented people without any promotions while their favorites got promoted easily.

Pros

Flexible, steady, good leadership, supportive, collaborative

Cons

Low base comp, very poor merit increase, does not have a separate pool to fund promotions so often promotions come with very minimal salary increase (basically it’s a pat on the back)

Pros

Opportunities to travel and be promoted.

Cons

The Hours can be very long

Pros

This is within Mercer's Health and Benefits Consulting group. It's a decent place to start after graduation. Base pay can be pretty low, especially if you're not on the actuarial track and are a strategy consultant. However, pay is hourly and you are compensated for the long overtime you have to work, evening out pay to a decent living wage (pre-pandemic, during COVID OT was cut for all junior employees, yet middle management and senior leadership saw no pay cuts, pushing analysts to not be able to afford to live in NYC and not get compensated for work they did, but I digress) People are friendly, and it's a great learning opportunity. If you are lucky to get put under the right teams and people, your responsibilities can grow very quickly and you can get exposed to a lot.

Cons

The pay discrepancy between consultants on the actuarial track vs strategy is absurd, especially at the lower levels where the difference in responsibilities is actually minimal. Actuarial consultants also have near unlimited budgets for employee development for their tests, while generalists do not have the same opportunities to earn even relevant certifications on the company's dime. This is why attrition is so high on the general strategy consultants side. Also, with the exception of very senior principal/partner levels, promotions are based almost exclusively on tenure rather than performance, alienating higher performers when consistently low performers get promoted along with them. Also for a health benefits brokerage firm, the benefits packages are ironically pretty terrible.