As some have said, good experience can be gained at Mercer but the company is a springboard to better things.
Pros
- Good dental and welfare benefits. Medical getting pricey and no HSA account option. - Co-workers are generally okay to work with. - Good location for those taking the train and always find parking. - Ability to be proactive if you are lucky and get a decent manager.
Cons
- You are treated like a child. You get told what to do by Senior Associates and above which hinders your growth as a manager. This will hurt you when trying to get out of the company to one that expect you to know how to manage. - Remote management is terrible. Often the top managers are not in the same place as those that report to them. This causes problems to run rampant with no action taken with these guys to improve their ability to manage people. You are micro-managed with most everything but your manager might hardly be managed at all. - Compensation is way lower than average market value. Some managers can make less than the people who report to them while outside hires are given higher salaries for job-hopping. This is not an isolated incident. I've been with the company for over 7 years and it happens all the time. - Poorly managed HR team. They don't understand their function and don't partner with managers to resolve employee issues. They are scared of lawsuits but create an unfair environment for the over-performing employees. - Schedules aren't flexible at all. Many of my direct reports get told this in the interview only to find out they are tied to a rigid schedule. Favortism reigns supreme so if you allow yourself to be micro-managed and never push back, you'll do just fine. - Company training is a joke, plain and simple. Leadership gets mad when you ask questions without reading through every piece of material ever published about the subject. Ridiculous. I always embrace questions from my employees and simply can not accept the overall lack of ownership / responsibility taken by Senior Associates and above to do their job the right way.
