Elsevier reviews

4.0

79% would recommend to a friend

(2,189 total reviews)

Kumsal Bayazit

91% approve of CEO

75% positive business outlook

Elsevier has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 2,189 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Elsevier employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media & Communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Sep 3, 2024

Stuck in a Rut

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. Beautiful, centrally located offices 2. 100% remote option for most employees 3, Generous leave and time-off policies 4. Option to buy into extremely high quality health insurance 5. Congenial, kind and thoughtful colleagues

Cons

1. Pervasive defeatist attitude as Elsevier consistently misses commercial goals with no leadership accountability whatsoever, must acquire companies to create illusion of growth 2. Must learn and refine vocabulary/behaviors to explain/excuse consistent patterns of failure to organically grow 3. Most managers possess expertise and experience substantially below their grade and function at extremely low levels 4. Management is committed to finding ways to excuse lack of performance rather than solving problems, employees are highly incentivized to tell management team how effective they are 5. Managers conspire to force effective leaders out so as to maintain defeatist and apologetic culture

avatar
Elsevier Response
1y
Thank you for sharing your review. We understand that every experience is unique and take each review seriously. While we regret to hear about the concerns raised regarding leadership accountability, growth, and performance, we would have benefitted more from your insights through investigation when you were with us. As a director, when you were with us, you must know that we are committed to cultivating an open culture where employees feel comfortable sharing candid feedback, contributing ideas, and driving change. While these experiences don't align with our intended culture, they highlight opportunities where we can and must do better. Our vision is to foster a high-performance environment emphasising transparent leadership and accountability. To that end, we're actively focused on building leadership capacity at all levels, investing in targeted training, and implementing performance metrics emphasising accountability and support for our teams. Growth is a crucial focus, and while acquisitions are part of our strategy to strengthen our capabilities, organic growth is equally critical. We are refining our internal development programs to ensure every leader and manager has the tools, knowledge, and support needed to succeed at the highest levels. We value transparency, honest feedback, and problem-solving over complacency, and we welcome further discussions with current and former employees to ensure we address these concerns comprehensively. Contact us at elseviergdrev@elsevier.com to discuss the issues you raised further.
2.0
Aug 7, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work life balance, Brand recognition, some interesting engineering challenges depending on the team.

Cons

Little-to-no technically savvy managers, promotion of non-technical roles to engineering leadership roles, no promotions for technical personnel, low compensation, very little respect for direct contributors, almost no recognition of strong performers under poor managers. Very heavy on managers and light on leaders basically. They talk a good game, but when it comes to action, there is none. This is basically a great place to start out given the brand recognition and scale of problem sets, but there are no growth opportunities for engineers. Elsevier acquires technology - they don't build it.

Viewing 229 - 231 of 2,189 Reviews

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