Elsevier Development Editor reviews

The (obviously essential) rush towards eReader and online books is not being properly resourced. Staff without requisite training being dumped with the workload, despite deep staff cuts and without any reduction in their existing work. Management make sudden and unplanned demands for information and analysis from commissioning staff but don't reduce commissioning expectations, while seeming to make no progress towards effective solutions to the IT challenges of the move to e-pub. Operations cut service levels to editorial groups, state that there is no loss of quality, and noone in management calls them on it.

Where to start? Overall, there seems to be very little regard for employees. I have worked there for over six years (and am currently freelancing for them, although not for much longer), and the contempt with which employees are treated beggars belief. Departments are made redundant at a moments notice and salaries are kept at a ridiculously low level, while senior management continues to engage in charades about 'valuing our people'. Employee opinions are frequently sought to asses the lay of the land (i.e. the levels of dissatisfaction), but very little - if anything - ever comes of it and as job security has become increasingly volatile, I would venture to guess that there is a certain amount of knowledge that people surveyed in January won't be around by July. The hiring policy seems very erratic and training is almost non-existent. Rather than designating a senior member of staff or manager to the training of new employees, newcomers are usually left to their own devices or are trained by editorial assistants or whoever happens to pass by when help is needed. An incredible amount of time is wasted on providing "soft" skills (such as negotiation, time management or how to reduce stress), whereas actual training to do one's job does not happen in any way worth mentioning. Obviously, with the publishing industry in flux, it is difficult to maintain those intangible benefits that have defined publishing (such as attending author events, etc.), but while no efforts has been made to motivate staff by raising salaries appreciably, all other benefits have been reduced to a bare minimum and editorial work at Elsevier has deteriorated to a sausage factory where metrical targets have superseded any kind of concern for the finished product, the customer, or the author. With outsourcing to India taking up momentum, most tasks that made editorial fun and interesting have now been sent off-shore, while the drudge has been left for the UK staff, who conveniently double as a white-faced facade for a 'respectable' publishing business rooted in Europe/the USA.