Predator Company from the Mid-90s - AVOID - Business Manager ALTEN Employee Review

Glassdoor is an open platform enabling employees to write comments and rate their current and/or previous companies in order to give them the opportunity to improve and fine-tune their model. It is thus necessary to keep a strong level of measure and seriousness in the feedback provided. The lack of substance, honesty and accuracy of the here above comment, cannot unfortunately be considered as a constructive feedback and the foundation of improvements but simply as the spread of unjustified and dangerous hatred. However, it is necessary to address some of the points through a factual way: 1- Salaries/targets: Talking to hundreds of engineers and customers every month enables us to have an accurate vision and understanding of the market. Alten is continuously ensuring a relevant alignment between our salary policy and the UK market. This alignment is performed through the continuous collaboration of our Recruitment and HR teams. Although they are ambitious and challenging, some people actually do reach their targets, and they get the right level of reward for this. 2- Company culture: We pride ourselves in being a very multicultural and inclusive organisation, having more than 30 different nationalities present in the company. I am sure you will understand that in such circumstances, the culture cannot be based on a “French attitude”, and this comment is clearly on the brink of racism. While it seems you understood the only way to get a promotion was through cheating your results or influencing people in the organisation, I would like to clarify that people who are promoted are truly deserving people, who prove they could deliver to the level of excellence that is expected at Alten. 3- Management: unfortunately, here again, some allegations cannot be taken seriously (toilet breaks in calendars?). Bringing the appropriate level of support to our employees is a top priority for us. On particularly challenging roles (such as Business Manager), weekly follow-up meetings are there to ensure we provide the right level of guidance on all the complex situations that can be encountered in the job. From a consultant’s perspective, it is important to remind that on top of the quarterly career follow-up meetings, they benefit from daily follow-up from a project perspective through our technical direction and the account managers. 4- Job/ownership: from the very first steps of the recruitment process, it is made very clear what are the responsibilities of a Business Manager who will join the organisation: being in charge of developing activities with existing and new clients, recruiting your team of engineers and developing their career in the organisation. At Alten, Business Managers are entrepreneurs. They are in charge of “a company in the company”, their Business Unit. As entrepreneurs, they are encouraged to create positive and virtuous cycles and first and foremost, to face their responsibilities. While this may not be suitable for everybody, this is explained in a transparent way from the beginning. 5- Job security: offering a large majority of permanent contracts to our employees enables us to ensure a maximum level of job-security. This year has been exceptionally challenging for a number of businesses and I am sure you will appreciate that having to let people go in turbulent times in not something that anyone enjoys doing, let alone “finding an excuse” to have to do so. In a nutshell, I can see that most of these topics are the result of a lack of communication and misinformation about the company. I actually identify this as an improvement opportunity. Your review tells me that: although Alten is striving to make sure all necessary messages, processes and policies are communicated on the most accurate way, it seems important to keep getting better at it. In the future, I would advise you to address any frustration with your management at its ignition so that it doesn’t become disproportionate. As a manager, you probably know that the containment and corrective actions are easier to implement right after a problem occurs.