Pearson reviews

3.5

59% would recommend to a friend

(7,749 total reviews)
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Omar Abbosh

57% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

Pearson has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 7,749 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Pearson employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media & Communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

8K reviews
1.0
Apr 25, 2019

Toxic Micromanagement

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Easy job to get; if you meet the requirements, you're in. You can work from home and the pay is okay, although insulting for a job that requires a college degree. Incentives for being both fast and accurate.

Cons

This is the worst micromanagement I have ever seen in my life. You are nothing more than a warm body to them; easily replaced when you burn out due to the mind-numbing nature of the work and the lack of trust and support. If you don't meet a certain speed and accuracy level, you are tersely informed of your inadequacy, via either chat or phone (yes, they will call you and chastise you for being too slow, too inaccurate, etc.), during your shift. There is absolutely no independent thought allowed in this position; if you do not follow the rubric EXACTLY and if your ratings don't match up precisely with those assigned by the more senior scorers, you are forced to retrain (on THEIR schedule, mind you, not yours), and if you're still not perfect, you're fired. I don't know why they hired us if they didn't intend to trust our word. This job requires a bachelor's degree, but like I said, they don't trust you or your education. You are connected to a scoring supervisor for your entire shift and your performance is monitored constantly by an indicator on the screen. This level of micromanagement is not only extremely stressful, it is counterproductive; it's difficult to concentrate and even more difficult to perform well when one is constantly anxious about being chastised for "low validity/performance" at any given moment. Ironically, if we were given more freedom and flexibility, I can almost guarantee performance and morale would skyrocket. Besides the toxic micromanagement, the work itself is, as I mentioned, mind-numbing to the extreme. The essays are generally poorly written, and you're required to stare at them for hours on end, which is unbelievably dull. You can almost feel your performance slipping the longer you do it, which will, of course, prompt a snarky phone call or message. I've been doing this off and on for a year, and not only has it not gotten better, it has gotten worse. You aren't expected to use your education, your skills, or your experience. You are expected to read the mind of a different random stranger for every shift.

1.0
Dec 21, 2018

Slowly drowning

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work/life balance. There is a decent balance between work and life though at times people will put off their own work and then it gets dropped on to other people to rush through the work. Benefits. The benefits package is pretty good so no really complaints in that department. Free coffee.

Cons

No professional growth. You cannot grow/advance within this company. Since the work/life balance is so relaxed good luck at getting promotions along with proper raises. One of the main reasons I see this happening is due to the lack of proper leadership. Even with the layoffs you’d think they would then readjust roles and salaries to fit but that isn’t the case. Alot of the employees wear multiple hats and are still expected to put out quality work along with meeting strict deadlines on their current salary (so motivation within the company just sucks). Lack of leadership. Since the new CEO took over the company has been seeing massive layoffs. Obviously while transitioning into a new media (“publishing to digital”) will take time and there will also be some casualties .Though after working there for over 5 years I can say that every year for the past 4 years there have been major layoffs. It’s a clear sign that they are struggling to come up with an actual solid plan for the future of the company. Instead they are selling off assets or firing a bunch of employees each year just to balance out on their overall budget. 5 years ago they were trying to transition from publishing to digital and now they are saying scratch digital content and are now trying to push into artificial intelligence...All those different types of media within a 5 year period. Good luck! Lack of middle management. Since top leadership lacks so does middle management. Like I previously stated there have been layoffs every year for the last 4 years (big layoffs). Each year after they let people go someone from middle management (who actually doesn’t know too much about the actual products under their own leadership) will send out a email OR might show up into the office to “rally” the left over employees. They will tell you how the work and employees are so important and will even go to the lengths of saying that Pearsons number one strength is their employees. Lack of transparency. Each year people are caught off guard when they get let go from the company. Sometimes lower management doesn’t even see the layoffs coming but with upper-middle management always blowing smoke it’s hard to actually see what the future of your employment is. So job security doesn’t exist within this company Lack of culture. Within 5 years of working at Pearson there have been maybe 1 or 2 happy hours. Team lunches, team happy hours, team off-site meet ups, and holiday parties are pretty much nonexistent within this company. Even at work you can tell it’s more of a corporate vibe in which it revolves around titles and not innovation. So team building doesn’t really exist. Lack of dedication. Within 5 years of working at Pearson on one product we never had a dedicated development team that only supported us. Hence why alot of their digital products are struggling to make money or be actual true innovation within digital education realm. So I’m not sure how Pearson is now going to all of a sudden jump into artificial intelligence when they can’t even have successful digital products (not sure how shareholders are letting this happen either). Also when I first started they didn’t even have the proper software to do your job (they didn’t even have the Adobe product line). Just lack of dedication throughout Pearson on multiple fronts.

3.0
Mar 23, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great benefits (medical, dental, vision, life, etc.) - Tuition reimbursement - Great PTO policy (vacation + sick + personal + employee designated holiday) - Company sponsored volunteer days - There's a lot to do outside of your day to day work (social committee, employee resource groups, etc.) - Work from home opportunity (depending on your position) - Great coworkers - Mother's Room for nursing mothers to pump

Cons

- Minimal room for advancement. In Pearson (Online Learning Services division) they don't promote most positions from within. - Revolving door: people are constantly quitting, most times because that the only way to advance their career - Work environment depends on who your manager is, there's no consistency of culture so you could either have an amazing experience because of the manager you have of it could be the worst place to work for the same reason

Viewing 154 - 156 of 7,749 Reviews

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