Disgusting Company, Disgusting and Dishonest Management - Stay far away!
Pros
Very few. They generally don't bother you too much as long as you get your work done and fall in line within their bureaucracy. Stable company with a decent outlook for the future. Mostly nice people even if many don't care too much about the average employee at the company.
Cons
Very, very poor management that is dishonest. They recently cut most employees' pay 20%. They literally told us we should just budget better and ask for forbearance on any mortgages, car loans, etc. we may have. I think most people understand the economy is currently going through a rough patch, but as the Marsh & McClennan CEO put it: this is a very blunt instrument for a short-term issue. Further, as Crain's (a business publication) put it, this move is completely unnecessary if they would just make other adjustments (for example cutting the $400M annual dividend). Many many people are very angry about this and are looking to leave as soon as they can. Some other points about this move which make it truly disgusting and dishonest: - The company has purchased billions of dollars of it's overpriced stock back in recent years - much of which was bought using debt. They now claim they are making these huge pay cuts that are devastating for many people partly because of this very debt burden they brought onto the company for financial engineering. - The company announced a large acquisition a few weeks before the Coronavirus shutdowns began in earnest in the US. They have repeatedly said they intend to go through with this. One key provision of the merger agreement is that they will have to pay the target $1B if they walk away. The target has already said they will not be cutting pay. Add to that the fact that the employees of the target will likely receive some type of retention bonuses in early 2021 once this deal closes and you really understand things better. Current employees get the privilege of taking a 20% pay cut while employees of the target are not and even better many will get big retention bonuses in early 2021. - This move is really a two year pay cut. It's 20% for the rest of 2020, but most of us are also betting that our bonuses will be cut dramatically in 2021 to pay for the acquisition noted above. All-in-all, Aon management is very dishonest and disingenuous. They made the moves noted above to build the CEO's legacy while completely disregarding the impact it will have on the company's employees.
