Pros
-Nice people to work with and management are general easy going - especially in research. -The London office has a great view of the Tower of London and the Sydney office is also lux looking over the harbour, -Work life balance: Post covid there is genuinely a lot of flexibility, most people work from home. -Mercer give you plenty of time to focus on studying with work life balance (i.e. working from home) and many study days. As such, you can focus on passing the CFA exams and getting the associated pay bumps along the way. Before leaving an leveraging your new credentials and the experience for a higher paying job.
Cons
- The incentive structure needs to be reassessed - i.e. the limited upside (bonus) available if you do perform well is somewhat demotivating.. - Certain teams have limited career progression and are very top heavy - Partners make okay money, however nothing like other firms though. Typically they will come from well off families and being a partner at Mercer is just a cushy career to keep them busy (when not golfing).. Furthermore, certain partners on the asset allocation team clearly lack independent thoughts/views, which makes you question their true value add... Ultimately however, the cost of their salary gets lost in the numbers of what is a large global (US centric) conglomerate. Thus, MMC shareholders end up footing the bill... - Management focus on minimising costs over maximising profits. This is especially true in research. Many areas to grow the business here but lack of vision/ambition. - Although work life balance is good, this does weigh on the younger members of the team (i.e. those in their 20's) looking to develop and progress in their career by learning from more senior individuals who are rarely present these days. - Senior staff end up taking a lot of the client meetings alone which ends up weighing on the progression and development of more junior members of the team.