Pros
Colleagues can be lovely, especially nice when sharing tales of mental health issues caused by the misery of a poorly managed and rudderless company. Lovely benefits such as additional holiday, private health and generous pension plans, making it really hard to leave even though one's career is stalled by lack of opportunity. Yearly bonus based on company performance and personal incentive targets for more senior positions.
Cons
The company has been in decline for a number of years and is obviously finding it hard to know what to focus the business on with falling profits from print sales and a slow start with electronic products, leaving it lagging behind competitors. Constant restructuring has led to on going top heavy management and still no clear vision for the future. It's getting boring and exhausting to be stuck waiting for a pay out, which is really the only reason most people haven't quit. Offshoring all aspects of author relationships and production really impacts the ability of the Commissioning staff to successfully contract new titles. They cannot promise anything but extremely mediocre communication with sub-standard English speakers who only work part of the UK and US day, and now books are tiered by revenue the benefits for an author to publish a book with Wiley are minimal. Journals are really the only thing left to Wileys portfolio. Feel of being stuck in the 80s with lower level Assistant roles no longer supported towards promotion and development but instead held back with no chance to travel or attend conferences or network. Fear of supporting working from home for lower level colleagues but a real sense of absenteeism from those with the slightest seniority - comes across as lack of trust. That combined with a severe shortage of staff in the office, due to the now numerous lay offs, means that being physically present in the office amounts to sitting alone at a desk surrounded by utter silence and no colleagues to talk to in the immediate vicinity. Cue a lot of sad people wearing headphones and not looking up to speak for an entire working day. Some benefits have been changed for newer members of staff that make a real divide from those who have been working at the company for longer. Some people have company cars, additional holiday allowance, private health care and even less hours for their full time contract, with other staff working extra time each day to fulfill the additional 2.5 hour contracts. These new contracts don't just come into effect when a person joins but also if you are found an alternative role rather than being made redundant. Parking is a constant issue with an allotted 10 spaces that can be hired for a monthly fee and the rest first come first served. These spaces never come up for anyone else to have so the same 10 people seem to have held them for 8+ years. Some people have to arrive extremely early to find parking or risk day fees in city centre car parks. This isn't the case at the Oxford site which is far better planned for commuting. As previously mentioned, the old boys club is sickening to work amidst and highly demoralizing for female staff. Great talent is left to vegetate by virtue of gender. For many, most jobs are now customer services. No matter what area or job title you will spend the majority of your time apologising to clients for failures and mishaps, whilst not being able to explain what Wiley will do to make things better. Because there's no plan for improvement.