In my time here, I've seen the pay increased twice (but it is still FAR below the Austin-area standard for work requiring critical thinking on this level). Comparable jobs in Austin begin at $18-20/hr. You will not make that here.
Both times I saw increases take place in this office, brand new hires received the pay increase, while the company continued paying all pre-existing employees the former rate for MONTHS, presumably hoping it would go undiscussed and therefore unnoticed? We have all learned to ask the new hires what they are making to determine when we're getting the shaft. What this means, is that seasoned employees regularly make $2/hr less than the trainees they are teaching. Additionally, when Marsh raised the bottom tier of employees up this spring, it brought entry-level employees up to the pay level of the Tier 2 and Team Lead positions, and those tiered employees were told that a tiered pay structure would be announced shortly later. However, after a few weeks, managers have let everyone know that right now, that's just the way it is, so all entry level employees make the same as the tier 2 and team lead employees who have 2 and 3 times as much work as they do, and are required to train and support those tier 1 employees. This didn't affect me personally, but I feel the pain of my coworkers, and we are losing valuable team members every single day. For Austin, specifically, this company-wide bump is not as helpful as it was likely to be in many of the brokerage offices around the country. You must develop your pay structure based on the cost of living in each office. This is not a one-size-fits-all country. Different cities have different norms.
Additionally, this week, a new employee (5 months) in an entry level position was promoted to a Team Lead position, without meeting the 6-months-in-your-position requirement or even being fluent in their entry level duties ----- being chosen over employees with several years of experience who were extremely qualified for the position. The employee base has come to find out that he has a family member in upper management, and the interviews were irrelevant because he was cherry picked by the office head "to be groomed for management" in the words of one of our more candid supervisors. Again, didn't affect me personally, but I sympathize with the disgruntled and now job-seeking collection of upset peers.
The most hilarious thing that the management has done lately is conduct "Stay Interviews" to collect information on what they are doing right and why the tenured few stay in their positions. The interviewees were handpicked by managers to ensure that only those who "love their jobs" were questioned, and well-known in-house managers conducted the interviews, so no one was going to be candid or comfortable sharing actual woes. If Marsh cares, what it should do is hire a 3rd party firm to come in and conduct interviews with employees chosen at random to find out what the issues are, and then anonymously share the data collected with our leadership. That would be the correct way to do it. Nobody tells someone in power above them what they hate about their job. Duh.
The amount of time Marsh Austin spends training new employees is insane, because new hires quit as soon as they are off the training wheels, and the revolving door never stops turning. Most of the employees hired are 22-25 year olds straight out of college. They beam about this job because it is their first corporate-with-benefits job that lets them wear jeans to work. In reality, Marsh Austin underpays and overworks its employees, and is desperately missing out on what could be SUCH A COMFORTABLE PLACE TO WORK if the pay was adequate and the growth/management was being maintained by some kind of checks and balances / anti-favoritism system.
I would argue that more of us are actively seeking alternative employment than are not, using Marsh only as a cushion to get to the next opportunity. Why am I still here? I need the cushion temporarily while I finish paying off student debt. This is a shared story among many of our members.
