Merlin Entertainments Diversity And Inclusion FAQ

Pros

Great benefits, the food is great, and young people can get experience as managers quite quickly if they are responsible and have a desire to grow.

Cons

They expect you to work as much as though you are making $100,000 salary but only pay you half of that. You are held to a high standard, but not given the tools to succeed. Middle management is good, but operates in fear for their jobs so will not stand up when the situation warrants it. Upper management takes a authoritarian, holier than thou approach most of the time and is inaccessible. They also only focus on the negative, rarely giving compliments or appreciation for a job well done but focusing on the minute detail that wasn’t perfect. This is a good place to spend a couple years and get some management experience then move into somewhere that takes running a business seriously.

Advice to Management

Invest in your people, your business, and your infrastructure. Budget training hours for new hires, and realize that every year can’t show a growth in sales with a reduction in cost, especially when minimum wage continues to rise. If you are going to add an attraction, spend the money to do it right and quit embarrassing yourselves. You’d think after that rollercoaster accident in the U.K. that you’d quit using the lowest bidder for attraction contractors! Take a look at what you pay, and give an equal work load amongst departments. Keep making the kids happy but pretty soon if the state of repair and product offered doesn’t improve, mommy and daddy will just go see the mouse up the road for an extra day rather than see this carnival.

Pros

An excellent global company with a strong vision and values. There are so many opportunities to develop a career at Merlin and make a difference. The company cares for its employees and is focused on developing their employees, increasing diversity and inclusiveness and creating memorable experiences for their guests. There are also great perks, such as free tickets to the attractions worldwide!

Cons

Merlin needs to fast track its technology advancements and embrace change on a global level.

Pros

PTO policy is fairly generous. They are focused on having a diverse and inclusive team. There are lots of career opportunities because turnover is so high (you can decide if that's a pro or a con).

Cons

Company systems are not set up for a company of its size. Support for addressing the issues within the broken systems is almost non-existent. Many people in admin positions are overworked and burnt out so even though the PTO policy is generous, it's difficult to take time off because of workload. Positions are bonus eligible and they will tell you all about it in the interview/offer process, but bonuses are not paid out. You will never see a list of criteria that you need to hit in order to make bonus. There is a sense of urgency for all tasks but not enough resources, tools, or time to get the tasks done. I saw a number of employees get fired for "underperforming" when they hadn't been given any warning that they were not meeting their manager's expectations. Some of these employees that were let go were manager level employees or higher. Turnover is incredibly high because it is not a healthy work environment.

Advice to Management

Run defense for your employees and listen to them. Start set reasonable expectations to hold them accountable to and manage up by setting hard boundaries to help protect teams from getting burnt out.

Pros

Amount of Attractions is substantial

Cons

They are very racist and sexist there, also you hardly get promoted on hard work. It is usually who know who and who like who more. Worst company I spent my time working for.

Advice to Management

Build better cultures that doesn’t only care about money.

Pros

Friendly and inclusive finance team that socialise together, and help each other out when time permits. It's for this reason that I give an overall score of 2 stars rather than 1.

Cons

The accounting system is Sage Line 500 which is not adequate for a multi-site, multi-operational global FTSE100 business. Hyperion is used for consolidated reporting, which is updated via a spreadsheet upload. Consequently there is heavy reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes, and a lot of room for human error. Inter-company transactions are particularly manual and time-consuming. Manual invoices are raised in Excel between entities with no real controls other than clearing the inter-company matching report during month end. A lot of time is spent producing a draft P&L down to EBITDA in Excel before the period has ended. More time is then spent providing reasons for variances that may not materialise, rather than working on the actual figures. This inevitably leads to long hours trying to close the P&L by working day 5, and compromises the accuracy of the accounts. Actual figures will likely be adjusted for any variances to the draft figures regardless of the correct accounting treatment. Senior management do not value their staff at all, and seemingly have no idea what is involved in meeting all their demands. There is no appreciation for unpaid overtime, the attitude being that if you have worked late it's because you have done something wrong. Flexitime is not permitted. Health and safety within the office is non-existent. In general, the company does not seem willing to invest a penny unless they believe it will directly drive sales.