Smith & Williamson Employee Reviews about "great people"

Pros

- Great diversity of work - Great people / 'family-like' environment - Promotions available - Relaxed environment

Cons

- Always behind. The firm is very old-fashioned (from the 'style' of the office, to the management style). Even by being in central London, you feel like working in a very close minded organisation. - Very old-fashioned mentality for a London firm, it feels like working in an 80's style accounting firm. - Technology is pretty much non-existent, although the firm is starting to work on it. - Not flexible at all. Working from home is pretty much non-existent and seems to be only available to certain people. The process is very unclear around it, some staff members work from home regularly, when for some others it seems to always be declined. I have also been hired on the basis that WFH was not regular yet, but the firm wanted to change mentalities, hence I was open to work from home when I wanted to try and push it forward. After 6 months, I was almost always told off when I mentioned I would work from home, and later be told that I could not work from home anymore, unless an official request had been made to my managers and HR ... this is not what I have been told during the interview process. - Poor management and utilisation of staff members. Although I keep hearing that the team I used to work in, is understaffed (hence why I have been hired), I find myself being low on workload even by constantly requesting other team members for work. This is due again, to the firm being very old-school and refusing team members to share clients to help each other, meaning that some staff members will be flooded by their workload, whilst other who could help, are bored. - Benefits are not good and very oriented towards people having children. - Culture and professionalism needs to change. It is common practice for people in the office to openly joke in a nasty way about other staff members and be borderline discriminatory. This goes from tax trainees to Director levels ... not very impressing.

Pros

Great people to work with especially when joining the grad scheme, almost feels like being back at university. Plenty of social aspects and great range of work.

Cons

The work life balance is not good if you are a hard worker as you will always be busy. Those less diligent get away with not doing as much.

Pros

There are some great people that work at the firm and lots of training.

Cons

Very old fashioned systems, no online document management system for the non investment team (i.e. audit and tax), so endless paper trails