Edelman reviews

This used to be a great company, but two CEO changes, first in 2011, then again in 2012, completely overhauled the company's philosophy, business model, operations, clientele, and culture. Change in inevitable with any leadership turnover, but nearly every change implemented in the last 3 years has been to the organization's detriment. Company leaders encourage pettiness, gossip, and passive-aggressive behaviors. The culture is absolutely toxic. Most of the talented employees were either pushed out, or treated so terribly they left on their own within 2 years. The CEO is not a leader, he's a dictator and a jerk.

In my personal opinion, everything that is wrong with this company stems directly from the senior leadership. Two out of the six values that Edelman defines as the cornerstones of its culture include: respect and integrity. These values have been highly ill-regarded by senior management since the revolving door of unqualified managers opened roughly two years ago. While it is without question that Mike Berland possesses the industry expertise to be a thought leader in how market research should progress into the era of globalization and social media, he chose to portray himself as an out-of-touch, unreachable CEO. Mike created unrealistic project deadlines for his employees, which were made all the more stressful by his vague communication of the projects, or even the client relationships. This stress and disconnect caused intelligent, hard-working employees to burn out quickly, and fostered an extremely poor work/life balance. Furthermore, while global company meetings happened frequently, important announcements (such as people leaving the firm) often went undocumented to the entire company, and long-term initiatives and goals were changed frequently within the short-term. I completely understand the fact that being an entrepreneur sometimes means trying something new that might fail, but not being fully aware of all possible outcomes, weaknesses, and barriers of an initiative before immersing an entire company in it is irresponsible and a waste of everyone's time... which once again, creates burned-out employees. Unfortunately, this disrespect and lack of transparency caused me to feel uncaring and unmotivated about going to work and doing my best, and ultimately the cons overpowered the pros about my job. Certain bad experiences unfortunately turned into scars that I couldn't look past. It pained me to know that just beyond this department lied a world of opportunity, if I could just find a way to get back in to the company I thought I was joining.