Salary does not reflect the responsibility and pressures of a customer facing workstream lead role on large multi million pound projects.
I spent a very large proportion of my working life at System C, and am no doubt easy to identify, but I owe it to future staff to give my honest opinion and some kind of provable baseline on my old personal working conditions, although for others their conditions obviously may differ. I hope transparency is always welcome at System C.
System C was a good employer prior to COVID, under the original founders, the McKesson Corporation and the Symphony Technology Group. Since then however a new private equity owner (CVC Capital Partners) has taken over and things have changed drastically and the atmosphere has become very cold.
My average annual salary "rise" for last 5 years under the current ownership was under £1500 (2.76% per year), pre tax.
Average bonus when paid (which was not every year) was under £1200 per year, pre tax.
Extensive job cuts after acquisition of numerous smaller companies have made it very slow and difficult to do a deployment type job, as much knowledge and experience has been lost and overburdened staff have retreated from engagement with their colleagues.
There is a current heavy emphasis on reaching billable hours targets.
Resulting heavy focus on time recording damages interest in just doing your job.
My old role was home based, although pre COVID I was working 2 to 3 days a week on hospital sites and in some cases staying in hotels away from home. Post COVID this switched to full time home working, as the NHS did not want people on site. Just before I left however, there was a switch in focus to pulling people back into offices, under the guise of "collaboration". A desk and parking space is bookable via a company app.
Max employer pension contributions (Defined Contribution pension) for employees at my level was 8%, matched to employee contributions.
Only 28 days holiday a year (including one for your birth month) after a very length service.
Poor understanding by senior and middle management on what customer facing deployment staff do on a daily basis, causing friction and questioning/rejection of timesheets
Often faced hostile senior level customer staff with minimal support.
Helped successfully deploy over a dozen large EPR projects, however the last project took twice as long and the week after the successful GoLive, we had a Town Hall meeting. The senior leadership team offered absolutely no thanks to the deployment team for their hard work over those years. The only person who did was a HR person in the last few seconds of the call.
When I left to retire, I received many very kind messages from deployment colleagues and customers, who personally contacted me and thanked me for all my help over the years. I received a cold standard letter from HR thanking me for my efforts but making no mention of my retirement, although the junior HR person who conducted my exit interview was very kind and thanked me on behalf of the company. Senior management said nothing on my retirement. Not one sent an email. Says is all really.
It may work for you and it did for me for a while, but if (like myself), you are a quiet, capable, slightly unambitious person who just wants to do their job, then the current culture will be very difficult for you. I genuinely felt I was taken for granted and was being exploited by the time I decided to leave. Caveat emptor.
