Pros
Exposure to varied business from small charities and owner managed businesses up to Aim listed PLCs. Some extremely supportive co-workers and line manager. When faced with technical difficulties. Given the size of RSM and the experience of employees there is always someone extremely knowledgeable one way or another about the accounting issues you are facing. There is a decent social culture which you have the choice to engage with or not.
Cons
The work and workload can at times be fairly tough and pressures from management does not align with messenging. Partners consistently say they do not want the firm or workload to end up like the big four while consistently taking on larger and larger clients. This is also shown in BD updates where key future target clients are always name brand companies. During Covid-19 lockdowns it was suggested by a Senior Individual that we should be increasing our working hours by the length of our commute. The entitlement of management to think that any new free time employees have should immediately be given to the firm exemplifies their attitude. No valuable steps were taken to help individuals with Mental Health issues. While I was there the EAP did not offer 1 to 1 counselling only a powerpoint/video which was not worthwhile Staff are frequently told they can take a mental health day if they need it with absolutely no consideration to what this then does to their workload and deadlines. Most of the stress of the job caused by often unrealistic deadlines and so taking a day off is never going to help. Little support is given to reallocate work a day off is taken. Poor Mental Health often first materialises as poor performance but as soon as this happens staff are PIP'd which removes many steps employees could have taken to improve it (e.g. take a sabbatical, move to a department more matching to their skillset). While I was there the firm would shout from the rooftops when the Gender Pay Gap closes year on year but it is barely mentioned when it goes the other way. The firm in general has a weird obsession with Control Testing as a method of gaining audit assurance. Control testing is great at saving time in practice but has to be written off if the control fails which seemed to happen in more cases than not on the clients I was working on. This would require replanning and substantive retesting by which point the budget is blown and you're now working in your evenings. In my experience even getting a line manager to approve expenses in a timely manner was difficult. I can't tell you how many people told me they understood when I handed my notice in which in of itself is telling