I think the UK is very different to the US. When I did training in the US all I thought was "i wish i was here."
In the UK anyway...
Everything is very secretive. There is no information of how anything works.
For example, we are rated by our managers for engagement performance on every client, I got a 3 on every project. 4 is the highest. So my average for the year should be a 3.0 surely? Afterall I got 3's all year long on every project.
Well, at year end, they produce a document called ICP, which is what your bonus is based on. Within this document my engagement performance was only a 2.0. Why did they drop me down? Nobody would explain why or change it. I was told this was correct. HOW? SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN THE PROCESS?! Well there is no process, they just pluck out the number they fancy and write it down.
A second example of secrecy.
There are "talent days" where everybody high up gets together and discusses your promotion. Again, it is a closed book, nobody knows how it works. It is all kept a secret. People do not even talk about when it is, we find out in secretive ways such as browsing a managers calendar on outlook and see it. Nobody knows how talent days work, so nobody has any idea how promotions work, and nobody feels it is done fairly because it is so closed book.
The general view is that things such as promotions are just given to whoever the MD likes the most.
If you do an excellent job here, you are not rewarded. Those who move up in the firm are those who play the game, ie. people who organise social events that they know their MD will like, such as their MDs favourite sport. This is to get into the MD's "good books." If you do not play the game in this way, you will be stuck at the same level, even if you are the best one at the job.
Recognition is only given to those who shout the loudest. People do not do things because it is the right thing to do, people do things because they have a strategic motivation to do it. People do not care about their client work, this is the last thing on peoples minds, instead people care about impressing the right person internally. There is so much focus on impressing the right people internally.
Then, people lower down are rated on how utilised they are. This is based on time being charged to a client. Too often, managers do not scope a project correctly. IE there is actually 20 days of work, but a manager / AD sells the work as a 10 day project. The net result is consultants and senior consultants working 20 days, but the managers always turn around and say "only charge 10 days." This is because, if people charged 20 days, there would be a 10 day write off and it would look bad on those high up. As such people lowerdown look unchargeable for 10 days when they have actually been working till 9pm daily, and at weekends, and haven't stopped. Often SCs are cramming the 20 days of work into 15 days by working into the early hours (I have worked beyond 2am), then only charging 10 days, losing 5 days of charegeability....
Even worse, after working this hard, you will see your bonus reduced, as your chargeability suffered, when you were only charging 10 days, but working 15 solid days and nights. The net result is those high up look good, as they deliver projects within budget, you lower down look bad as you look under utilised, and you get a telling off from MDs.
The worst part is, the following year, the project needs doing again. Those scheduling look at the budget last year, see only 10 days were charged, so the following year sell it as an 8 day project, believing we can be slightly more efficiency. As time goes on, this behaviour makes it worse and worse.
High up, e.g MDs are constantly moaning about chargeability being low, but they seemingly have no idea most of us are actually over 100% utilised but only charging 65/70% of our time MAX. To get us any higher utilised we would have to work 20 hours a day.
All chargeability figures are wrong because they do not actually represent the hours we are working. The utilisation rate you have is the amount of hours your boss said you could charge. If you did 20 days of work, often the boss will only let you charge 10 days, so you get 50% utilisation / chargeability and everybody in the firm looks down on you.
Social wise, there are a few groups, but they are extremely cliquey. You have to know the right individual to be invited to events or to get into whatsapp groups. Social committee isn't bad though.
