Pros: fitness and health allowance as part of benefits, employee assistance program available, casual dress in most departments, attention to ergonomics at workstations, bonuses, and free tickets to rock concerts
Cons: constant upheaval, managerial mediocrity, insensitive human resources department, lack of vision from the upper ranks
A typical day at work in the former Content Development Services business unit involved the writing and publishing of training documentation. The Instructor Led Training, Webinars, Web-based Training, user guides, reference manuals, video scripts, and other documents our unit delivered were used within the organization, with carrier-partners as part
– more... of New Product Support Readiness, and with product end users. A project could range from requiring a few hours of work before submission to the editing team, to being months in duration with heavy consultation of subject matter experts and potentially delivering a User Acceptance Trial. When I started, the review and publication of support articles for the internal and external knowledge base was something everybody did for at least an hour every day. Timewise, the expectation was that the salary amount was for a minimum 40-hour week, Monday to Friday, and if a deadline was urgent, you stayed until the work was done. A repercussion I observed was that co-op placement students and young, single employees were favoured over older employees who wanted or required work-life balance. Management did not seem particularly motivated or focused, and promotion seemed more based upon who than what candidates knew - of a half-dozen managers to whom I reported, about two seemed truly appropriate as people leaders. My co-workers were second-to-none - bright, creative, hard-working innovators to a person, good-humoured and pleasant, and really the strength of the organization. The hardest part of the job was not becoming disillusioned by constantly shifting project and organizational demands, and a tendency to have meetings for the sake of having meetings. The most enjoyable part of my work there was the interaction with great people in an environment that was conducive, almost until the end, to the production of high quality work. – less