Worst experience I have ever had at a company
Pros
Health care plans are good.
Cons
This place is run in the US in a lot of ways like it's run out of someone's garage. Light on processes, objectives are not disseminated by management, employees don't understand the overall vision for the business because it's not being communicated at all. There are virtually zero attempts at team building or truly educating the members of teams to make them more effective in their roles. The senior management team claims they are focused on maintaining a high performance environment, but at the same time are unwilling to pay for high performing employees. Senior managers don't listen to the rank and file or front line managers to see if they are clear on the direction they are taking the company or if their leadership is working. Senior leadership constantly make decisions in a vacuum, resulting in a constant churn of stress and client issues - and problems with employee satisfaction in their roles. In two years of employment I went through three large scale reorganizations and three different managers. Suffice to say that stability is not Experian's strong suit. Experian also went to an offshore contractor model in the last few years, implementing it in a stupid, sort of plodding one size fits all way. The results have been mixed to poor but the senior management team loves it because the bottom line looks fantastic with all the money that was saved by firing all those American full time employees and replacing them with cheap contract labor (that don't know the job). Experian could be a world class company if they decided to focus less on the bottom line (they are already generating a ton of revenue) and more on customer excellence and employee development. In fact the bottom line would look even better if the focus were shifted appropriately. Overall I'd say the problem with Experian in the US is specifically leadership at the VP level and above. Over time, the way they are managing the direction of the company will drive the most experienced, senior people on the front line out, and all that money they've saved will turn out to be a wasted opportunity for future gains. Ironically all those managers will probably be gone by the time things begin to fail. The problem is that Experian sells very specific, proprietary products and services and it takes years for someone to truly be effective creating and selling those products and services. People with the knowledge needed to fill technical roles at Experian do not exist in the marketplace. They have to be trained after being hired to actually do the job working on products and services that only exist at Experian. This isn't well suited to a contractor model, and it lends itself to having higher paid, more technically proficient employees who can learn quickly in order to be successful. Since Experian's US leadership isn't interested in doing either of these things, instead focusing on achieving short term gains at the expense of the long term, I don't think the future bodes well for the company's continued success in the United States. I'm relieved that I don't work there anymore. I've got a long history working for large, successful Fortune 100 corporations. This was the most stressful, frustrating experience I have ever had working for a company.
