Control Risks reviews about "people"

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.

Middle management has become way too sales-oriented, and expect employees to be sales robots. Office environment is very sterile (aka not friendly and warm). A lot of drama that is always caused by a few female employees makes the whole office environment very sour. Very quiet and not a friendly place to work. Annual bonus’ canceled year on year due to financial mismanagement. Little to no recognition for employees’ efforts.

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).

It sometimes feels like budgetary restraints are never ending, from managers being unable to hire the candidates they want, to investment in software that would make work easier for a large group, being able to take a team on a nice lunch etc. Some people, managers in particular, might find the constant 'no' response to requests involving financial input frustrating / demotivating.

Change to a partnership model has ruined what used to be the defining characteristics of the company - it was 'employee owned', now it's owned by a handful of employees and it's very much us and them. It's just another corporate consultancy now - it was always a home for those who were a bit different from that, and now it just wants robots who can repeat buzzwords.

There is no discrimination in the company among the staff