Good company and products, poor management and compensation - MDP Morningstar Employee Review

Thanks for your honest feedback on our Morningstar Development Program (MDP). Since MDP is our primary channel for recruiting top talent into Morningstar, we take all concerns and criticisms related to the program very seriously. Naturally we appreciate all of the “pros” you called out in your review, but we wanted to acknowledge and clarify a few things related to your concerns as well. We don’t intentionally hide the fact that many of our first-year MDPs take on roles in our customer service area. Nonetheless we’ve heard comments like yours recently and we’re considering ways to ensure perfect clarity when it comes to shaping expectations. We strongly believe that a rotation in client service is absolutely the best way to build a foundational understanding of Morningstar that will pay off down the road. A rich understanding of our customers, our products, and our data—all areas of expertise one builds on the customer service team—is invaluable to any future role at Morningstar. So we think the investment is well worth it. But because we want all team members in all roles to feel engaged and energized by their work, we’re actively working with our client service leadership to reimagine our entry-level support roles with an eye towards moving some of the more routine tasks to teams (or technology solutions) that are better situated for such work. Our hope and expectation of the top notch MDPs we hire is that they’ll view their responsibility not simply as providing high-quality support to our customers, but also improving the client service job itself. We want them to leave their role better than they found it for the next generation of MDPs. By way of a little data, about 60% of first-year MDPs in the business track are assigned roles in our customer service team. However, by the second year only about a fifth remain in customer service (typically taking on team leader or advanced/field-service roles). Others have moved on to roles in practically every other area of Morningstar with the largest portions working in Research, Product Management, and Marketing/Communications. You’re right that second and third-year placements are need-based (it wouldn’t be good business to staff positions that aren’t needed) but we try very hard to match MDPs with their primary areas of interest or place them into roles that will help build skills toward their longer-term career goals. Your comments about compensation, while concerning, are a little confusing to us. Since every MDP finalist is provided a compensation offer before they accept the role and join Morningstar, there should not be any confusion as to what the role pays. And following this logic, there should not be any obvious reason for disappointment in the early years of your career at Morningstar. We know our pay for entry-level roles must be competitive if we expect to attract the best talent (yes, that’s our goal), and we find that our acceptance rate for MDP offers is relatively high. So we must be doing something right. We know there are some employers and industries that pay recent college grads more than Morningstar does, but we find our holistic “employee value proposition” is sufficiently compelling to attract the kind of candidates we aspire to hire. As you noted, on top of our base salary (and great benefits package) we offer a bonus that is heavily based on company and individual performance. It’s no secret that our company performance fell a bit below target in 2016, and we therefore didn’t pay out the kind of year-end bonuses we had expected. But even in that context we’ve shared data with all employees that show just how much individual performance can influence bonus outcomes. So regardless of company performance in 2017 (which we expect to be better than 2016) there’s every reason to work hard and excel, as individual performance truly matters. Thanks again for your comments. Glassdoor is a good place to start a conversation, but if you’d like to have a more rich two-way discussion so would I. Always feel free to reach out to me directly and share your thoughts, concerns, and ideas. I’m all ears!