The only performance metric upper-level management cares about is utilization, but staffing is wildly inconsistent on the implementation side of the business. On the TMS side, you will be consistently overworked and underpaid. This means that if you're an implementation consultant, your effective "performance" is entirely dictated by the resource management office, not by your skills. If you're TMS, I honestly think there's better opportunity for advancement and distinguishing yourself (the head of TMS is excellent), but the work sucks, there's too much of it, and, again, you're underpaid for the amount of hours and stress you're likely putting in.
If you start at Mercer right out of college, you will be paid anywhere from 15% to 50% less than a peer at a different implementation partner. After two years with excellent performance reviews and good utilization, you can expect to be paid anywhere from 15% to 50% less than a peer at a different implementation partner. When asked about getting pay up to market/median, the practice head said on a practice-wide call that she was worried about people who were getting giant raises to go to other partners because "a lot would be expected of them for that salary." Bear in mind that most of the Mercer consultants in question are highly capable Ivy League grads and that all we're talking about is getting paid a market rate.
Due to the aforementioned issues (largely the pay), Mercer is experiencing rather high turnover at the moment, and that also leads to other issues with projects needing new resources in the middle, resources who haven't left being stretched thin, never knowing who's still around to ask questions of, etc.
There's also a bit of an issue with quantity over quality, with consultants being staffed on more projects than they can reasonably manage well whenever there's been a glut of sales.
