LMI reviews

3.6

62% would recommend to a friend

(568 total reviews)
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Josh Wilson

52% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

LMI has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 568 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The LMI employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management & Consulting industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

568 reviews
1.0
Nov 4, 2014

Who are we?

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It was a great company once. Employees and officers used to be mission focused. There was only one goal: providing superior client service.

Cons

Things started going downhill gradually in 2009 when the current CEO took charge. He convinced us there was an immediate need for benefit cuts (elimination of $500 Flexible Spending Account contribution; switch to a cheaper medical insurance provider with staff experiencing severe decline in service quality; removal of holiday on Friday after Thanksgiving even when funding goals were met or exceeded; removal of backup daycare service with Bright Horizons Child Care; re-characterization of sick leave). Two more benefit changes that will be effective January 2015: 1. All employees except management will lose their private offices. This is not a big deal for employees at other companies. However for LMI staff this was a generous offering that made us feel appreciated. 2. In September 2014 a reduction of 5% in retirement contributions was announced. This brings LMI's contribution down from 12% to 7%. That is still quite good compared to industry norms. This needs to be viewed holistically: LMI's base salary was lower compared to our competitors'. However LMI more than made it up with all the generous benefits listed above. When those benefits are also reduced employee satisfaction becomes a problem. It is admirable that employees are still willing to strongly support LMI despite the recently announced benefit cutbacks. There is only one problem: sacrifice is only expected from the rank-and-file. Officer compensation has skyrocketed since the current CEO took charge in 2009. Where is the proof? As a not-for-profit, the IRS requires LMI to submit Form 990 that breaks out major expense categories. One of these categories is officer compensation. All this is public information. Glassdoor doesn't allow links to be provided in reviews. LMI's 990 forms can be viewed at Foundationcenter dot org as PDF documents. The following are the page numbers for each of the FYs: Page 26 for FY09; page 27 for FY10; page 27 for FY11. There was a shocking increase in FY10: officer bonuses went up by over 2,000% (that is not a typo). Compensation decreased slightly in FY11 for them. This is a terrible message from management to the employees. Nobody is advocating socialism but shared sacrifice would be much appreciated. Especially for a not-or-profit, officer compensation seems astronomical. As comparison, MITRE's CEO (admittedly an FFRDC) made over $1 million in FY11. However their funding level was over $1 billion. LMIs funding in FY11 was $207 million and the CEO made $636,000. So while staff have been lulled into believing their bonuses have increased by approximately 3-4% over the years, it has come at the price of heavy benefit cuts and steep increase in executive compensation. How is that for a fair trade?

1.0
Oct 28, 2014

Going downhill fast . . .

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I've worked at LMI for over twenty years and have until very recently felt very positive about the company and the very talented people I work with. LMI has enjoyed a reputation as a highly respected non-profit consultancy. People have relied on us over the years for truly objective advice.

Cons

Unfortunately, things are changing for the worse. Our CEO has announced that benefits will be cut dramatically starting January 1, 2015 -- the company will contribute 40 percent less to our retirement and senior staffers are losing a week's vacation. Those senior staffers are also being forced to cash out half of the vacation days they were able to save up for future use. This is after a recent cut in healthcare benefits and some money- saving "improvements" to other less-used benefits (I didn't actually mind those). In addition, in recent years my pay raises have been very small and not even close to keeping up with inflation, despite superior performance reviews. LMI does have year-end bonuses but even those decreased in the last year. The management staff seem to get stratospheric bonuses while the research staff get very small ones. All of this is a little surprising given the fact that we have been told our company is financially strong. Indeed, every year has been better than the previous one (if better is measured by new business). It seems that our new corporate strategy is to be the low cost provider of services to the government. Other cost cutting measures include moving all staff out of their existing offices and into cubicles in a new building to save on floorspace. Interestingly enough overhead costs seem to be going up - our CEO keeps appointing more administrative vice presidents to solve the problem. The really troubling aspect of all of this is that our company has already taken a hit in quality due to some rampant growth in recent years. With the recent changes, talented and experienced staff are now updating their resumes and some have already left -- it seems like there is another going-away party every few days. Turnover is definitely on the rise. With modest salaries to begin with, it was already hard to attract talented people and now it's getting even worse because of the benefit cuts. There are lots of resumes for every job opening, but most are unqualified. As a result, quality is continuing to fall -- the recent cuts are the straw that is breaking the camel's back for LMI.

3.0
Oct 24, 2014

The company has changed

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people working there are great. The opportunities are there if you're in the right area.

Cons

Top heavy management structure. Fairness and equity issues are widely dependent on who you work for. Work-life issues can be out of balance.

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Glassdoor has 617 LMI reviews submitted anonymously by LMI employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if LMI is right for you.