Working at Hewitt Associates — Reviews by Employees

The Orlando office is a joke. The leaders and managers in customer service, well, I wouldn't call them leaders or managers. THe 'leader' herself of the group is an awful human being. She wobbles around the office (when she is at work that is) with her larger than life self (literally) acting like she cares. But behind closed doors this terrible woman is scheming. If you aren't in her circle, beware. The managers in the group who are under her are no better. But they are all just scared. They all spend too much time talking and gossipping, or coming up with activites as if we are in preschool. Why don't they work? Why don't they care about this company? More importantly, when will the real leaders of this company get a clue about whats going on and do something about it? We have clients who are miserable because we always miss service level. How long can CD make excuses and how long will it be put up with?

When I worked for Hewitt, 2006, it was common knowledge amongst employees that Hewitt tries their best to hire the weakest, most uneducated, most easily manipulated, least likely to speak out customer service representatives possible because that allows them to continue to mask their inept business practices and to continue to operate in very unethical ways. Sometimes someone with a brain and spine slides under their radar but those employees are beleaguered, mistreated and, if necessary, discriminated against to make sure they leave the company as soon as possible one way or another. Hewitt also has suspect, at best, pay practices and has gone against FSLA regulations in the past and currently continues these practices. As a previous employee who left several years ago, I was just made aware of this lawsuit recently. It would be very interesting to me to see if these pay practices expand beyond the Orlando Call Center. The suit, which is a matter of public record, is available for review on myorangeclerk.com if any other unaware employees, current or previous, would like to look into it and get paid for the time that was taken from them, unpaid, by Hewitt.

When I first began work at Hewitt, I absolutely loved my job. I have been at Hewitt 11 years this November 2010. This company began offshoring jobs at record speed in 2001. Since then the company has gone down hill fast. The work environment is so stressfull because we are working twice as hard to fix all of the problems caused by incompetence by offshored employees. They make the mistakes, we take the blame. Russ Fradin and his cronies have reduced this once remarkably competent business to a sweat shop. He has offshored more jobs and to say this is an American Company is a joke. The CIO is Indian and he takes great pleasure in offshoring as many jobs as possible to India. Our systems have been compromised because Indian associates who leave Hewitt for other employment in India have taken confidential information with them. Clients beware....

Pay would be okay if you weren't worked to death. Have a family... forget about this place!! If you’re exempt employee and only put in 45-50 hours a week don't ever look to advance even if you are a retired rocket scientist.

Through either layoffs or experienced associates finding jobs elsewhere, depth of knowledge is a large gap at times, so competency is generally lower than where it was in the past. In most cases, that's not an indictment against associates, but rather how management thinned out the heard. People with experience are caught in a catch 22... they can't stop and train new people because the deliverables always immediate. Training? What used to be a strong classroom training environment has been replaced over the past 5 years with computer based training that in my estimation only delivers probably about 20% of what associates learned when people taught those classes.

IF YOU ARE INTERVIEWING with Hewitt, be sure to ask very specific and direct questions on how you will learn and how long until you are expected to be proficient. Assuming that you do anything with the systems, keep in mind that this is a proprietary system that will take time to learn. If the answers don't seem to jell (and without hesitation from your interviewer), that should be a flag for you.

One more random ‘vent’: You may or may not be aware, but Hewitt used to offer free lunch to US associates. They took that away about 3 years ago. I wasn’t happy with that, but I can live with it. What irked me about that is that when they took it away, leadership was adiment that they were not taking away a benefit. Not quite sure how anyone without an expense account could say that wasn’t a benefit takeaway.

Even as bad as the economy and job market is, I'm praying almost every day to be rif'd and that I'd find something before that comp runs out. I'm not alone with that thought. By no means have a safe bet, but it just showed the dire mindset that many tenured associates have in this place that would have Ted Hewitt now rolling over in his grave as to how people are now treated.

I agree with all the prev. posters for the woodlands location.

callcenter with too much management and not enough respect for employees.

they're outsourcing everything and will Fire anyone who's close to recieving benefits.

This place is by far the worst company I have ever worked for. They care nothing about the employees, or their customers. Threats and browbeating are their way of managing their employees. With the job market in the tank, Hewitt does all it can to squeeze each employee to the limit knowing if you had someplace else to go, you'd be there.

It;s all cost savings and stock price. That's it. The continually send jobs overseas to the Indian offices while laying off people in the US. I have worked at other public firms but never at a firm where every second of every day was spent on seeing how we can raise the stock price. My other places cared about the customers and the product, we did our jobs right, the company did well and our stock price went up.

Hewitt has been buying their own stock back for a few years now. Heaven forbid they invest any of that money into any part of the business. They even borrowed $500 million (at like 6.5%) to spend to buy more stock back. It's a shell game with the end result of making the CEO and a few other select people rich.

A poster below mentioned raises sucked. That poster is right. You are lucky if you got 1%. Why, all the money spent on cost savings and increasing the profit on the same amount of revenue can't be given back to the employees in the form of any kind of raise...... nah, they need every $1 they have to buy the stock bck and keep the price pressure up.

The work environment is the most oppressive I have ever witnessed. If the soviet union was a company, this would be it. Micro-managing is the way they do it at Hewitt. Managers (and directors) know JACK about the department they are in charge of. Staff is cut and individual workloads are increases.

Growth? Not at Hewitt. Unless you are looking for a job in India, Hewitt is shrinking their US staff so don't look for any jobs or promotions on this side of the world.

Once the economy gets going this place is toast. Hundreds or thousands of people with tens of thousands of years of combined important business / client / technology experience and knowledge will be leaving in droves and Hewitt will be just a shell. There are still many talented people at Hewitt but the grumbling is everywhere.

Hewitt does these engagement surveys to determine Morale. They are supposed to be confidential but we all know we aren't. We all know they can tie back individual responses to a person. No one fills them out accurately. We all just fill them out middle of the road. Hewitt is wants to increase engagement but has no real incentive programs to do so. How best to increase the engagement scores other than to lay off the ones that are not happy.

If you work here, you know this is the truth. You know you are not alone. You know you'll be seeing your former Hewitt pals at other jobs once the economy gets better and people leave. If you don't work here, read this board carefully. For the most part, these posts are accurate. It would be best NOT to accept an offer from Hewitt unless you are in desperate need of income and have no other choices.

Screwitt really doesn't give a rat's ass about their employees. They foster animosity between coworkers.

Pay is okay but raises have been shit. I can see if your company is failing but our profits have increased (due to sending jobs overseas) but none of the employees have benefited from that in the form of decent pay raises.

Respect is shit. The company knows the job market sucks so they screw you as much as they can since they know you haven't got anywhere else to go.

Benefits are probably below average for a large firm like this.

Job security.... right.... what job security. As I mentioned above Hewitt is (and has been) sending jobs to India as fast as they can.

Work life balance is not as good as was promised when I was hired.

Career potential or growth is non-existent as far as I can tell in the US. With jobs being eliminated every 2 weeks and no real business growth there is no room for advancement

Location blows. Terrible traffic.

The competence of my co workers is good but declining. As more experience people are let go in favor of cheap labor, lots of knowledge is walking out the door.

Work environment is a joke. This is the real killer here. For example, they have all this propaganda about how Hewitt helps the needy and poor in the area. Stuff like supporting habitat for humanity and such. However, while they are distracting your attention with helping build a home for a poor person with this hand they are making more poor people by moving jobs overseas to the CEO and his pals can pocket the cash. The propaganda here is unbelievable. Each year you have to take a crappy online course about code of conduct and shit. Maybe that code should include not raping the US economy.

Hewitt is evil on 2 levels. First, they dupe other firms into handing over their payroll or benefits services. Hewitt then fires those people from that firm, transitions the work to Hewitt and then over time transitions it overseas so it's a double whammy. 2 rounds of layoffs. AND, all this time putting up the front that they are a caring organization.

Stay away!!!!

Hewitt Associates prides themselves on being the best at what they do. Being first among other companies in the HR outsourcing field. The company was founded on certain values that have kept Hewitt on top of it's game up until 5 years ago. This is probably the worst company I have ever had to work for in my life! Yes and I have worked in a retail environment, figure that one out! The management is the worst dog and pony show I have ever seen. They continue to feed you this crap about you will have the opportunity to do great things and bring in the client work and work on various implementation teams. What absolute lies. I work in the CSS part of the Toronto office. We have 3 managers. J$%^ O@#$%^&*, T&^@#$ M@#$%^&*( and E@ B#$%^&. These managers are probably the best example of company dollars being wasted on a daily basis. If it were just a matter of going in to work doing your job and leaving. That would be great. But it is NEVER like that. These managers get paid for hanging over your shoulder and telling you to do stupid things like "hang your jacket in the closet, or else!" Give me a break. Don't they have more important things to do? The answer is simple, no they don't they are just trying to justify their existence and get that green. Can I blame them, no - but if that is all you are doing as a manager, just trying to collect the paycheck, stay the hell off your employee's backs and stop micromanaging them. Hewitt is by far the most toxic environment anyone can work for. If you want to get far with Hewitt, don't bet on a raise of more that 2.5% or nothing at all some review cycles, although they will expect you to jump as high as you can anyway. Hewitt's reason for not giving a raise is "we're trying to bring the new people up to a medium level such as you are now", so in short if you gt to your mid-salary point don't expect anymore from this failure of a company. If you want to get a raise past your mid point then learn to kiss some @ss in that place. I remember that one of the managers J@!$ O*&$%^$#, would start giving you sh#$ for walking in 5 minutes late and then when you start complimenting her on her hair, all of a sudden she forgot those few minutes you walked in late, probably due to TTC issues anyway, but they don't give a rat's @ss anyway. Another thing that Hewitt will expect you to do is stay late whenever they want you too. If you are like me you will know your rights and tell them to f off. Other co-workers just stay late for fear of losing their jobs or getting a shi$$% raise at performance review time, which they would have gotten anyway, they just don't see that crappy if anything raise come at all. If you would like to work for a company in the HR sector, stay clear of Hewitt in Toronto, especially the CSS department. Trust me take a job in the retail sector, at least there you will only have to deal with crappy customers, you can leave and go home on time and you will peobably have a laugh, at Hewitt I feel like the life force is slowing being sucked out of my spirit. One last note, if you love being in meetings then this place is for you. The management will have a meeting to discuss what socks they should wear. In short they will call a meeting to discuss the most stupid things, waste your time and expect you to stay late to complete work that you would have finished if you had not been in that meeting. I truly hate this company, this is my experience.

I don't know about working for this company so I have to give it a 0.

But I can tell you all about having to get your benefits through them. It was easier to get a mortgage on my first house than it was to get my insurance benefits straightened out. This is no BS I have had to call them everyday for 2 and half months. Their is no accountability at this company. I cannot believe my employer uses them.

I actually have a friend who is planning to quit their job at my company because Hewitt screwed there benefits up so bad.

Now thats f-d