Control Risks reviews about "pay"

Hopeless HR, Poor mentoring, White-Run, Colonial - The first two being important for young consultants. It will be true that you will be treated like a cog in the wheel, replaceable at a moments' notice - but then that is how fast companies work. Mentoring opportunities are thrown around as "bait", a massive pool of intellectually strong employees continue to pass through CRG offices the world over - so the idea that this company has massive turn over is spot on. The HR tries hard, but there just is not enough support for employees - who work on some of the most sensitive confidential information.

Boring office culture, bad pay

*Homogeneous senior management (British, male, ex-government or journalist background) who promote and pay them selves bonuses at the expense of staff who add real value. Definitely a club mentality that exists. *If you are not a "native English speaker" (not Caucasian), you do not have any future here. Your work will always be inferior. Don't expect any significant promotions. *Poor financial management. The company ran it's finance to the ground from haphazard spending as well as poor account management. It's account receivables (primarily law firms) is astounding and probably not recoverable. The firm still refuses to acknowledge that working with law firms who don't pay on time is a bad way of doing business! *Ones dimensional way of thinking about its strategy. (Hire more people to increase revenue, we are control risks - clients should come to us for our reputation). The company operates in a highly competitive and niche market where smaller and cheaper companies who utilize technology and more efficient operations are gaining market share and working on tight margins. The company is delusional in thinking it's name has any brand equity amongst clients. *Mercurial company policies which protects unfair practices by senior management and is subject to change at the management as discretion. *Questionable values (ethics). The company recently hired a non executive director to provide strategic input and moral stewardship to the company. The said executive was once questioned by US government agencies during her tenure at a multinational bank about being implicated in facilitating money laundering for south American drug cartels. See "Dirty Money" on Netflix for more details. Again excellent choice for a moral steward and certainly reflects the company's values.

Overall, appears to rely on working young, smart people hard for a few years to create analysis that more senior members promote and sell. Not a lot of clear training opportunities for younger members. Not great money and really opaque pay and promotion structures. Really high HR turnover and a bit of a member's club mentality means that grievances are difficult to lodge. Managers heavily direct the ethos of their teams. There is little apparent centralised control over them, meaning that their personalities heavily affect their teams working environments, and also how much feedback and training their teams receive.

As a business it sells a brand that clients can trust when they most need support - CR claims they will give you experienced consultants, some of the best on the market. In real life that's far from true and as a manager I had to deliver on that brand promise, while extracting maximum leverage from people with zero experience, because we did not want to pay for the real deal. We tried so hard but always had a weird feeling that it was more about putting on a show than actually giving clients access to real experts. It worked out most of the time, but if clients really knew what happens in the "kitchen", many would walk away or ask to pay half the price. On a similar note the company's use of the word "expert" is abusive. They take someone with superficial knowledge and good presentation skills and here you go he is a "Control Risks expert" on something. The company maybe has 100 real experts globally. Out of 2,000 employees. You won't see them often because most of them want to leave anyways. The company has a really strong culture and it prides itself of being unique, doing things right, honest, etc...Actually that is only the case when it serves senior management. I've seen some very unethical career and pay management decisions that were not only condoned but supported by the top brass. It's generally around the idea of "give them the absolute least possible we can, they'll leave, we will find new bodies to suck their life out. " So if you ever want to be failry rewarded for your work and committement: Walk Away! Control Risks will give you experience but never a fair deal. Unless you are a white british ex military or, more recently part of the happy few high power female group crushing every body else in the name of "diversity" (it's not).

Good old boys network, low pay compared to others in the industry.

Pays well under industry average in CSC, has a terribly biased reward structure that disadvantages fee earning staff, has a business development department which, uniquely, refuses to write proposals or go to client meetings without babysitting and is generally quite extraordinarily incompetent, weirdly well paid and packed so full of ego that there is a visible force field surrounding them that defends them from anything but credit for other people's hard work.