Merlin Entertainments Work Life Balance FAQ

Pros

You can work from home due to Covid

Cons

Customer service advisor? No. You’ll be working in a demanding call centre. Call after call without any intervals between them. Short breaks, long hours, peanut pay, no flexibility, no sympathy from management if you want a break from the phones. Micro management, always being listened to and screen monitored. If you’re verbally unwell (cough/sore throat etc) they’d rather you be sick than do the thousands of emails piling up as they want all advisors on the phones only, all day long. Job is advertised as emails and live chats - not true whatsoever. Seem to try and lure in younger generation and pull the wool over their eyes in terms of basic working rights.

Advice to Management

Break the day up with email and live chat intervals instead of intense calls back to back all day everyday, it’s exhausting your employees. I think you’ll find you keep your staff and make customers a little happier too when they can get a response on emails and live chat.

Pros

Opportunities, travel, growth, development, people. This is a good place to be temporarily to grow your career and get the best opportunities to launch yourself into your next role.

Cons

Challenging, lack of support, lack of structure, uncertainty, projects changing, work life balance is not great

Advice to Management

A better support structure is needed and there needs to be better benefits, perks and rewards for employees

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.

Pros

Good team, friendly environment, flexible hours, decent perks for free entry and money off

Cons

Can be long hours, events are a killer, be expected to do more than just entertain

Advice to Management

Trust in your subordinates, hear new ideas

Pros

good start for freshman, the supervisor was really nice

Cons

location is too far from my place