Pros
Benefits are excellent Bolton & Menk is very client focused and staff treat their external clients well
Cons
Management allows bad behavior of long time employees (examples include: unwillingness to share/hide knowledge, answer questions and work together, ignoring diverse staff, know it all attitudes) to their internal clients. They do not trust new people they hire to be competent at their job. New employees are treated as if they are a threat to existing staff and cannot be trusted. Management wants to hold on to control over the smallest things and Bolton & Menk tends to be a top-down culture. Employees with specialized skills are not utilized to their full potential because long time employees feel they know everything on specialized topics already and believe they can do the same tasks better. They would prefer new staff members take orders verses using them as a resource to improve processes and ideas. If they do not feel they know something, management prefers to hire outside consultants for advice rather than listening to recommendations from an existing internal partner. Employees with specialized skills are discouraged to speak up or challenge ideas because it might make long time employees appear to be less knowledgeable on a certain topic or create fear of more work for management who are unwilling to give up control and actually trust, coach and help grow their staff. Management doesn’t always support lower level employees to gain new skills, or offer any coaching to be better at their jobs so that one day maybe they can advance in their careers. Communication between different work groups is poor, with no one really understanding how to use each other’s services or skills in a productive and efficient way. There is an issue with internal work groups thinking in a strategic fashion. Work groups are allowed to go rogue and do whatever they want without much thought about what other work groups are doing. This creates a lot of duplicated efforts, which wastes time and money. Transparency is also an issue, no one really knows what is going on except committee staff members, mostly made up of long time employees and owners. Information trickles down on occasion, but it is hard to know if the information you here are rumors or not. We don’t know what internal projects are being worked on, how they are going, or how they might affect us as employees. Staff also has no knowledge of how these things effect Bolton & Menk's strategic picture and overall goals as a company. There is no effort on upper and middle management’s part to change any of these behaviors. If you enjoy a task oriented position without insight on what or why you are doing something this is the right company for you. If you don’t mind being treated as if you are untrustworthy this is the right company for you. If you prefer to contribute to projects, offer ideas and suggestions, use all of your skills, and want management to help you grow professionally than I’d look elsewhere.
