Pros
I'll try to be completely non bias during this review - This company does have quite a few perks, good vacation/personal/sick time, generous benefits, very decent pay in today's economy Company provides extensive training in role, and generally sends reps away for a portion of training at company's expense - given a company credit card to book all travel and per diem on.. Company generally has fairly consistent communication from "upper" management - you know who the leaders are Ability to work from home after specified period of time, very flexible in this role during inclement weather For the most part, a set schedule so provides for a good work life balance Constantly growing in knowledge within role
Cons
Tied to a phone, all day. Place is run more like a call center than a payroll company. Metrics are looked at for average handle time, hold time, call length etc...Although some of this is understandable, sometimes an issue may be extremely drawn out or complicated (any payroll professional knows this), however you will be penalized or questioned if it takes too long or you have to attempt to follow up later Chance for advancement not encouraged - ADP flaunts their many careers openings but no where does it list the requirements of how long you must be in the current role before advancing. Managers expect you to stay in your role forever, and opportunity for growth is not there within client services unless you eventually take a managers job (which is rarely open), a support specialist (rarely open), or move outside of your Business Unit (somewhat tough since you have been accustomed to your business unit and may not have experience in the other area). Often working for free - Management plans a schedule for you on the phones which typically includes the majority of time on the phone taking inbound calls - with around 30 minutes for "off the phone" work that allows you to catch up on other commitments you may have with clients. They also give you either a 30 or 60 minute unpaid lunch, with two scheduled 15 minute breaks. The problem comes in when management expects you to remain "inbound" only taking incoming customer calls, limitign you from working on any commitments you may have without trying to squeeze it into a 30 minute resoultion time window. If you attempt to call out during scheduled inbound time, you affect your Availability which you guessed it, is a apart of the scoring for your merit increase. Many employees find themselves having to work during their lunch, during their breaks or after clocking out to finish up outstanding issues or catch up on communication Not to mention for a national payroll company - their time off record keeping is horrible. I know one instance of employees who were traveling for work were told by their manager they would be PAID for travel time while another employee was told they would NOT be paid - all because they had different managers.. Overworked - Recently in our region - they restructured teams which not only makes the clients unhappy but also employees.Employees now are consistently busy with no time to breath between calls. If we go against our scheduled coding, we are reprimanded. ADP offers many many products that client services is expected to support including the payroll application itself, have general knowledge of Time and Labor, Human Resources Benefits, General Ledger Reporting, Billing/Invoicing, Taxes, Compliance Questions and Payroll processing. Clients constantly complain about long wait times and this is due to ADP taking the policy of not replacing represenatives who are leaving the company due to the high stress. Team members are overworked. Management knows this, but will never admit to it. System issue - It would not be a day at ADP if something didn't go down. Whether it be the clients applications, or internal. SOMETHING goes down daily. Most commonly it is the knowledge base highly used for employees - since we are expected to handle so many issues on a wide variety of topics we have a knowledge base that is huge for help. This goes down ALL the time leaving reps reliant on others to get an answer. The second thing is a system that allows us to view client reports, it often freezes and fails to login. Often clients are able to see their reports when the ADP rep's who produced the reports cannot! This frequently goes down, atleast once a day. The next is our programming system is DOS based and not updated with current technology. For such a forward thinking company, the internet systems are outdated. Client applications usually have some type of outage atleast twice a week - if anything this is the main reason why ADP will not be #1 anymore - their technology aging is starting to show and their overworked reps are no longer willing to "cover" for the company and try to justify it.