Even with a foundation of great colleagues, Hanover is not a good place to work and I wouldn’t recommend joining.
During my second week, I joined a content team meeting led by a C-level leader. To answer an employee’s question about waning retention, they replied “Content Directors aren’t hired for long term retention.” Truly disheartening to know leadership did not value the retention of mine or my colleagues’ talents – all this before my first pay check.
Which leads to a great segue into compensation. As a market research firm, Hanover has a pretty clear picture on average compensation, yet consistently pays below market rate. Around a quarter to half of the Content Director (CD) pool is made up of former researchers, and while that may appear to be a positive example of career development at Hanover, promoted researchers start at the very bottom of the CD pay band ($75,000). Conversely, external CD hires generally start in the high $80s to low $90s. This leads to situations where an internal CD, with the same qualifications (mostly due to the lack of diversity in hiring and unspoken requirement for multiple graduate degrees – we’ll get to that later) usually onboard and train new external CDs - for around $15k less. Unsurprisingly, when CDs move on to new positions at competitors, they see average increases in compensation around the 40-60% ranges.
CDs who move on to competitors or different industries also report a better work life balance. In addition to appallingly low compensation, CD workload is incredibly high – unsurprising when recalling leaderships’ churn and burn model. When I interviewed, I was told my book of business would average around 30 clients. Before I resigned, CDs were balancing over 40 clients. Client projects at Hanover reflect an enterprise, rather than a mid or emerging market approach. Each research project requires a 30-60 minute scoping call, a 30 minute scope of work development, three days of managing a researcher assigned to the project, around four hours of editing (thank goodness for strong researchers, but this can be much longer with newer researchers), and an hour debrief. This cycle repeats every six weeks for each new project. (Multiple this process by five if it’s a difficult methodology such as survey or regression analysis.) It is an absolute guarantee that you’ll see a little green active dot next to your colleagues’ name on Teams on a Saturday afternoon – because the role cannot be done in a 45 to 50 hour work week.
Hanover has a talented pool of employees that go through a rigorous, but faulty interviewing process. The interview process consists of an application, an SAT-style test, a personality test, a phone screen, a research project, and a final round interview. Most roles in content require a master’s degree and CDs generally have terminal degrees. The same C-level leader who drives a churn and burn model also boasts that Hanover has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard. Much like the Ivies, Hanover lacks diversity and an inclusive environment. Hanover also prides itself on hiring from elite schools and employee referrals, further reflecting its lack of diversity. Of Hanover’s ten-strong leadership team, only two are people of color and three are women. Upper management also lacks diversity.
In the entirety of my professional career, I have yet to encounter a leadership team so inefficient, thoughtless, and toxic. During the pandemic, leadership had to be strong-armed into leading town halls to update the firm. Questions from the organization had to be asked before the town hall and responses were curated and scripted to be robotically answered. Difficult questions were often ignored. In June 2020, like many other organizations, Hanover was faced with the potential of layoffs. Unlike other organizations, Hanover managed this abominably. Rather than letting go 10-15% of its workforce humanely, it chose to drag out the process across weeks during an already anxious time. Leadership sent emails to the wrong people and sent firmwide emails with incorrect information giving false hope to colleagues who would be let go. In a true reflection of Hanover’s leadership, after the layoffs, it also enacted a 20% pay cut to all employees during 2020 Q3. Unlike other organizations, leadership did not take a larger pay cut than its employees citing democratization of the initiative. Had they taken a larger pay cut like many of their peers during this time several jobs could have been saved and the financial burden many employees encountered during this time could have been defrayed. By the end of 2020, Hanover’s bottom line was not greatly impacted, yet leadership has taken no action in returning pay cuts back to its employees.
Overall, I’m sad to paint the picture of a dysfunctional and toxic environment. However, as the tide turns from an employer market to a candidate-driven market, Hanover will need to make some serious changes before it can be considered a great place to work. For starters, it can start treating its employees like human beings.
