Towers Watson Reviews

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Great people - genuinely very clever; great IC, environment, collaborative, genuine , authentic and they live their values; long tenure;

Cons – Senior leadership very average; not terribly dynamic; risk averse; conservative and traditional; too much silo'd behaviour between lines of business (but gettting better at that)

Advice to Senior Management – Please retire and let some younger more dynamic people get on with it

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time

Pros – Good people here if you can find them but they have all left.
With the amount of people gone now, if you are a junior client consulting analyst you are able to go to client meetings in your first year, but is that really a good trade-off?

Cons – Your hard work is rewarded with more admin and coordination work. Most of your day is spent chasing people and writing up invoice summaries.
Juniors are expected to only do admin and billing for about 3-4 years until you make consultant. When you bring this up to managers, they only solidify that sentiment and ask you to be patient.
Low compensation.

Advice to Senior Management – Think about why your analysts are leaving.
Think about the business model, loyalty is not a business model in this paradigm shift.
There is a gap between all levels of employees. What you think works may not work for your junior tier.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time

Pros – Worldwide firm with personal recognition.

Cons – Nothing that I can think about

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Towers Watson full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Variety of work, flexibility to manage own work loads and good clients generally.

Cons – Targets, targets and more targets combined with requirement to charge for everything, open brown nosing and open 'sucking up' to move ahead, lack of collaboration and competition with colleagues.

Advice to Senior Management – You lost the Watson Wyatt culture and sold your souls to rampant individualism, rewarding same and similar behaviours and suppressing difference. A good place to learn and then move on, but not a nice place to work and try make a difference in the finish.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time

Pros – People are great if you are lucky enough to find them

Cons – I do mostly secretarial and admin work

Advice to Senior Management – Give your analysts better work and move faster with decisions

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time

Pros – A great place to learn!
Excellent study support
Friendly culture
Young company and very social
Supportive of learning
Coworkers collaborate well and do not compete or judge
7% pension contribution is great

Cons – In the UK, the head office is in Reigate, which is in the middle of the countryside and very inconvenient to reach by both public transport and car (parking spaces are only given after working 4-5 years at the firm)
Hours can be long.
Not a good place to earn!
Career progression can be slow especially for technical, non-client facing roles
Career progression very much related to the time worked at the company, rather than your performance or the value you add.
No reward on hard work, promotion is the same as it is related to the time you've worked at the firm and bonuses are standardized
Very difficult and political to move teams, and limited opportunity to move across geographies despite being a global company
Managers only care about their own team and don't care about the company as a whole, limiting employees opportunities to learn how the business works
Every role in Towers Watson is very specialist due to the size of the firm, limiting future prospects and hindering exit opportunities

Advice to Senior Management – Offer the employees a broader learning opportunity and the opportunity to move across teams and locations. Lots of good employees get stuck in the wrong team and then end up leaving the firm when they could have added lots of value to the firm

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time for more than a year

Pros – The people you generally work with are really nice and generally quite helpful.
Company pays for any study you want to do.

Cons – Management is poor in terms of communicating to employees leading to lack of team moral and motivation. Projects aren't planned properly meaning no organisation, work being rushed and having to be redone, etc.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees and take their thoughts into consideration

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Towers Watson full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – job to pay your bills

Cons – people are treated there like dirt, promotions by who you know and not what you know

Advice to Senior Management – the big bosses need to put system in place where they can monitor technical knowledges and human skills of their managers on an annual basis by requesting feedback from all employees under the particular manager

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Excellent study support. good opportunities for progression.

Cons – Salary increases in th elast few years have been poor, but I guess this is market-driven.

Advice to Senior Management – Need to do more to retain junior associates.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Towers Watson full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Exceptional colleagues that keep you sane during the daily grind. CFA/FIA paid for and adequate study support. Exposure to a range of departments.

Cons – Management completely disintegrated from analysts. Pay is extremely low until senior management, which is freely admitted. You won't get promoted quickly by being good or working hard, you are put on a conveyor belt and expected to be happy with it. Bonus is a joke again until more senior and you have to wait for seniors to die/retire/leave before positions are made available.

London office is depressing and dull. Sometimes work 8am - 10pm whilst seniors leave at 6.

Only apply if you enjoy updating spreadsheets, models and drafting emails for seniors. If you're lucky they might let you "check" other peoples attempts at making the circle bullet points squares.

Advice to Senior Management – If you hire the top talent don't expect to keep them for long if you don't start treating them fairly. Look at the deadwood in the higher ranks and promote the potentials. Don't treat the underachievers the same as the stars.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend