Mercer reviews

Mercer seems to manage toward making their end of year numbers and this means every year in November and December a large amount of people are laid off for "restructuring". Yet they continue to hire, which makes it look like it is also a way to low key get rid of people they no longer need (even if there has not been one performance related conversation). Good news is severance is good but this annual fact of life is something that keeps employees constantly worried about their job security.

The functional managers (i.e., partners without a book of business or corporate executives) do not provide any leadership. Almost all communications from management are vague or badly delivered (there was a corporate message called Peace, Love and Sales that was supposed to be come off as some kind of resistance/Guy Fawkes message that made zero sense). As a result, when the rank and file's base salaries were frozen and bonuses decreased year-over-year with very little explanation, but the CEO received a base salary increase, 112% bonus payout, plus a special $1M equity award there was a mass exodus. Overall, compensation at Mercer is low and they acknowledge it as a trade-off for the work life balance. However, in recent years the compensation system has gotten so out-of-whack that compensation is laughably low. If you are considering joining this company, make sure you ask about the recent turnover in the NYC office and how the underlying issues (compensation, people managers, and career development) have been addressed.