Pros
Currently there's leaving drinks to look forward to every month. A lot of us joined when HR used to push their friends and family recruitment campaign, so the remaining group of close knit long serving staff is the only reason most of us are still hear. On the face of it the pay is good for outside London.
Cons
The financial management by the finance leadership team seems dire. Colleagues in credit control are given unachievable targets as senior management allow the firm to continually over commit. 2- 3 years ago, we used to have Finance leadership and senior management which not only cared about us, but also protected our interested, helped solve the problems and above all prevented partners from making unreasonable demands whilst they wanted to treat us as their personal biller, without recognition of the other teams and partners we supported. We no longer have this. All the pressure is passed down from finance leadership and senior management to our team managers, with no meaningful support or solutions. Finance leadership either don't understand enough about the industry we work in, don't understand enough about the work we do in financial operations, or simply don't care about the impact their decisions are having on the staff in Chelmsford. This is affecting everyone's mental health and some are leaving without another job as they simply can't take any more. Half of us have one eye on the door. The other half are holding out for redundancy as the firm has invested heavily this year in bringing in process improvement managers and analysts, with the plan to replace most of us with AI and process automation.