Partners in Performance Reviews

considering its a global company and most consultants are mobile it is often a challenge with a work life balance

It has taken me several months since leaving the firm to decompress enough to feel I can write a balanced review. Which says a lot in and of itself. I think there are enough other reviews that speak to the pros and cons of life here as a consultant. Let’s talk about working in PIP Global Services (head office / support services, aka PGS). 1) You will be paid significantly worse than consultants at a similar level of experience/seniority. Unless you really go in fighting, your salary will only ever increase in line with the CPI. Your bonus will be token at best, potentially non-existent, and it will not reflect performance. Unlike consultants, you will never get 110% bonus for excellent performance and unless you are really screwing up, you will not receive less than 100% – generally there is very little effort put into the performance / salary / bonus review process for PGS staff. Consultants can also earn “firm building points” for activities such as presenting at a team meeting, or writing a blog post, or posting on linkedin, which translate into additional bonus. As a PGS employee you are not eligible to earn FB points, but you will still be encouraged/required to undertake these activities. 2) You must learn to live with a lack of job security. Redundancies happen constantly, both in the consulting pool and at PGS. Redundancy is frequently used in lieu of performance management and it is shocking the number of roles that get made redundant only to be filled again within a matter of months. It’s been particularly unpleasant watching this firm’s response to COVID – they cut headcount early and they cut deep, all the while plastering LinkedIn with posts promoting how they were doing great and could help other firms to respond to the crisis. 3) Within PGS there is very limited scope for career progression. This is mostly due to the fact that PGS teams are generally quite small and fairly flat; there is simply no ladder to climb. However, there is also very little acknowledgement or support for those who do wish to progress. Almost all training provided to PGS staff is soft skills, and/or aimed at helping you do your current role better, rather than preparing you to take the next step. Movement between teams/depts is very uncommon and promotions only happen when a manager leaves; making career advancement of a war of attrition. Also PGS roles are very niche (eg: there is no such thing as an HR generalist; the HR functions are split across 4-5 distinct teams), meaning you will become an expert in one very limited area only, which might not translate well to roles at other companies. 4) There is a huge chasm between how the consultants are treated vs how PGS are treated. All the company’s energy is focussed on the consultants, any benefits felt by PGS is merely a by-product. Be prepared to feel like a second class citizen. Examples: 1) a few years ago the company had a massively busy end to the year, everyone was exhausted and approaching burnout, so they decided to thank staff for their efforts. While this was a nice gesture, it feel a little hollow when consultants were given a nice bottle of champagne and two extra days of annual leave, whereas as PGS staff only received the champagne. 2) when implementing a new parental leave policy, there was serious conversation between the (98% male) director group whether this would be offered to all staff or only consultants. 3) All consultants receive regular, ongoing training aimed at helping them progress in their careers. Until recently, PGS staff weren’t even allowed to complete the company’s own in-house trainings, and even now it’s only if you push for it, it’s never offered. 5) The firms still needs to do a lot of work on diversity and inclusiveness. While they are aware of this and pay a lot of lip service, there are yet to be any tangible results. They talk about recruiting more (any!) senior women, yet all five directors hired in the last 18 months are men. Within PGS, gender diversity is less of an issue and on the surface it looks like a relatively racially diverse department also. But look a little closer and you’ll notice that every single management position is filled by a Caucasian. More generally: 6) There is a serious lack of emotional intelligence at senior management level. This is true both across the firm as a whole and the top echelon of PGS, and it is very evident in the way the firm treats its staff and the culture within the firm. 7) Take the glassdoor ratings with a large grain of salt. Notice that the positive reviews come in clusters (eg: 18 five-star reviews over the course of 3 days in January 2020) – this is 100% because management have asked people to go and put up good reviews as part of their marketing/recruitment strategy.