While there are some pros for working for Vanguard, there are too many cons that justify staying at Vanguard for an extended amount of time. What the role boils down to is that you are working in a call center with no autonomy. While the company promotes flexibility in the role, there is no such thing. Flexibility is only available if there is time open according to business needs - which is almost never.
To make things worse, management is inept. Too often Vanguard is hiring inexperienced managers right out of college. Often times they are hired into the Vanguard Accelerated Development Program (VADP), which does rotations throughout the year in different departments. Unfortunately, those rotations only give them a brief exposure to those departments. They are unable to become true experts and have zero management experience. This results in a manager who are generally in their young 20's telling people what to do, when they don't even know what they are doing themselves. While many are not against someone younger being a boss, all crew are against that boss knowing nothing and showing zero signs of leadership.
In addition, each manager has a different set of guidelines. Some managers are more strict, others are more lenient when reviewing phone calls. This leads to varying statistics for crew. Which makes it much more difficult to attain the numbers that are set forth by upper management. These goals as it is, are extremely unrealistic. The goals have steadily increased this year and numbers show nearly half of crew across all sites have failed in meeting their metrics last year. Why on earth would management raise those numbers then?
The culture at Vanguard is quickly deteriorating. While Vanguard preaches that is not a sales institution, it is pushing the new Personal Advisers Services greatly. Metrics on how many leads that are passed on count for each employee. The main benefit of PAS is the fact that they provide behavioral coaching. While for some it may be needed, many clients do not have a need. In order for crew to be successful in these metrics, they need to sign up so many clients each month for a consultation. The Assigned Representatives have a quota to hit for PAS leads as well, which leads to questionable behavior and ethics, and forces crew to strive to do anything in order to hit their numbers. Management likes to tell employees that they are doing "a great job" and like to offer "sincere thanks" for the job that crew does in this area. However, it comes across very disingenuous.
Management also communicates very poorly with its employees. Half the time there are new services or letters being sent out to clients that staff is not informed about. Clients will call in knowing something that is changing that client facing crew have no idea about. When broached on this subject, management turns the question back on the crew. Coaching sessions are often just questions such as "what do you think you can do better?" or "how did that make you feel?" or "what are your thoughts on this subject?". While that can be useful, when it is used too often it makes leaders seem as if they are deflecting and really have no input or knowledge.
Lastly, I'll end with the fact that Vanguard prides itself on never laying people off. While this is true, what that really means is reassigning people to different departments. That means that an employee will have to find a new role within 90 days, which could very well be at a lower salary often times, and if they do not find a role they are done with the company. Sound very fair?
