Avantages
One of the primary reasons I joined Edelman Gurgaon's PA team was the overwhelming positive reviews this organisation had on Glassdoor. Given my experience here, I would like to list down some pros and cons so that future employees can make an informative choice. Pros: 1. Encourages employees to take complete ownership of projects and really be drivers of key client accounts. This is applicable to even the junior most team members. People who are self-starters and with good managerial skills can thrive in such an environment.
Inconvénients
Cons: 1. Absence of mentorship - Whatever I have learnt at Edelman, I have learnt myself and because I was lucky enough to have some patient clients. The leadership and senior management does not provide any mentorship/guidance to the team and inexperienced team members are forced to take big decisions on major client accounts. Team structures are skewed in a way that your reporting manager isnt on your client accounts. This means that your manager isnt aware of the work you are doing and isnt able to guide/appreciate your work. 2. The company doesnt invest in its employees and there is a lot of distrust in the system. This distrust is purely because of bad team/organisational structuring which results in complete information asymmetry. I am pretty confident that this is a conscious decision the organisation has taken given that it doesnt want no 1 individual or no 1 team to be in a position to ever poach a client. Nonetheless, for me this sort of an environment was not for me. 3. No true teams - Due to the team structuring, you never truly have a team. You are working with everyone and noone at the same time. You can always request for people to help (and they will mostly) but you cant ever count on anyone to have your back. 4. The PA team doesnt really do any PA work. PR is Edelman's core business. The PA team acts more as a support function for the PR business. The PA team handles many PR accounts and core PA work is very limited. Personally, I dont even see any drive/confidence in the leadership to expand the PA business. This means that the PA team is compensated poorly when compared to the PR teams, the intent to employee retention, skill building etc. is very low.