Pros
(1) Flexibility - researchers are able to work remotely, on occasion, which is good if you're traveling, sick, or if weather is bad. (2) Independent work - a plus if you like working independently. A negative if you need to socialize. But if you're on the research side, you should not need to or even have the time to socialize. (3) Free coffee, tea, snacks (4) The new professional development initiative where researchers accrue a day every six weeks to use on online courses or other prof development ideas. (5) PTO increases by a day each year you are employed. No rollover limits. (6) Opportunity to hone research and writing skills. Hanover is like the big shiny house on the top of the hill, but once you get closer, you see all the cracks and how dilapidated it is. Management likes to point to the bright shiny things it throws at us, like happy hours, its learning and development program, more happy hours, executive office hours, and the like, but all of that is covering up the cracks. High turnover, bad work life balance - unless you choose life and end up trading work quality and performance, known culture of bad sales practices and essentially lying to clients. All the company cares about is churning out projects as fast as it can. It doesn't matter who does it, as long as it gets done.
Cons
(1) Flexibility - researchers are fully able to complete our work remotely, all the time. Of course, there are some researchers who may not be able to do so, or may not want to. Give us the option of being able to work telework all the time, based on performance. The privilege can always be taken away if the researcher is underperforming while remote. The CHRO will likely make a comment about company morale, the fun activities and volunteer activities that researchers do together, but none of those are good arguments. (2) Timelines - they aren't lying to you when they say timelines are short. But when they tell clients that we spend about two weeks for a project, feel free to laugh. If researchers are given the full amount of time the company quotes to clients, then perhaps deliverables would be better. This dishonesty is disheartening and obviously dishonest. Especially when clients come back with less than positive reviews, and you are caught in the crosshairs. Another item with timelines - management likes to say we can extend deadlines, but projects are pushed back so many times, the pipeline is congested, and there is hardly ever room for extensions. Instead you have to settle with sending in a shoddy but complete report or an incomplete report partly because of management's bad planning. But all the blame is on you, because you get graded on your projects, and you can't grade your CDs. (3) Open floor plans - Stop kidding yourselves with open floor plans. We don't have time to share knowledge when we're so busy trying to meet impractical deadlines. The company is once again moving about half of its workforce to yet another location, and we all hear that HR is going forward with an open floor plan, even for directors. This is one of THE clearest indication that the company just plain does not care about the research side. HR has taken comments from people in Content, but it's known that HR isn't even considering our thoughts. A mere formality to show us that they care. But you know what? That's not caring. Or, maybe HR is also just trying to assuage all the reviewers here who complain about the cubicle setting and lack of socialization with coworkers. Well, open floor plans are even worse. IMO, the ones complaining are more likely to be the underperforming researchers who have time to socialize to the extent where they prefer open floor plans. (4) Transparency - None to speak of. The company used to have a different rewards program for researchers, then all of a sudden it changed to something else. We used to have quarterly updates, we have none anymore. We used to have a Hanover newsletter, we do not any more. No explanation. Everything just disappears. Or appears. (5) Planning - also none of this. If there was, the company would not have to have moved so many times in so few years. (6) Promotion and salary increases - the CHRO says that salary adjustments are given to those with good performance reviews. This is not true. Salary adjustments are selectively given to those with good performance reviews. Salary adjustments are thrown your way when you leave. Those who stay and perform well must argue for their own raises. (7) It would help if researchers could rate their CDs and MCDs, after each project or when performance reviews come around. The current system is terrible. in order to review superiors, we have to disclose our names. Hanover believes that researchers are so childish and irresponsible that we are unable to properly review superiors under the cloak of anonymity. Even under anonymity, I have heard stories from other coworkers about being questioned whether they had penned particular reviews on Glassdoor.
