Fidelity Investments reviews

I have been at the company for 7 months as a 401K associate. I feel like the culture and environment turns my good co-workers into fearful drones looking out for only themselves. And now from here down are just facts: You have to have your computer system up and running with 4-5 applications by the start of your shift. if the computer locks up, which happens at least once a day, more for others, you cannot let the customer know, keep talking, reboot, refresh etc. they are now transitioning us into a different computer system but coming up this month. I'm not optimistic. My Veritude hired co-workers were on the job for 6 months until transitioning into non-Veritude, or I guess "regular Fidelity employees" were not eligible for the mid year review raise. Also, the day they transition, their computer systems were locked up and it took all day for IT to fix. The company was not prepared. This is how I found out how many there were at my site it was about a quarter of the DC associates. Many of these people were some of the best members of my team. I didn't know what Veritude was until I read Glassdoor this evening. it is actually a Fidelity hiring department. It is a temp to hire. So Fidelity hires some employees and gives them the same job as other regular employees but they do not get the mid year review raise or quarterly bonus. My manager purposefully plays politics and does not hide it. The salary is very low. You get sick leave throughout the year but each time you call in sick it counts against you as an "incident". Each manager has discretion on what will be used against you. This is unfair period. The company match is 7% on the retirement savings acct. but only after you have worked there 1 year, and you are not 100% vested until five years. Each site in the nation has only specific job roles available. Our job is to go above and beyond for the customer and work for the customer, which, if done right, means printing out statements and literature by hand and sending them in envelopes or calling out to our solutions desk to do research on complicated issues or submitting research requests which are complicated forms where we have the least bit of training on. Any work done that is not on the phone is going to be counted against your hold time, your idle time or if you are unlucky and do not take your lunch on time, your adherence time. We get two 15 min breaks and 30 min lunch. It takes 15 min to walk down to the cafeteria to acquire food after standing in line with the slowest people in the world (management knows this) You eat in 10 min, go to the restroom and rush back to get system ready to start again. that is assuming there are no tasks to wrap up after getting off the phone and starting your lunch clock, and there always is, along with some trying to talk to you.

Unfortunately, when training ends, the reality is that associates must position Fidelity IRA's, regardless of whether or not enough information has been gathered from the customer to substantiate the pitch. Since there's no time for a consultative approach when managers expect you to take as many calls as possible--- and because there's no need for a consultative approach when an IRA is always the answer--- phone interactions result in the same canned pitch over and over. Managers and Guidance Support Specialists coach to numbers only. Customer satisfaction surveys somehow no longer matter. Site wide departmental sales performance reports are routinely e-mailed to the group and posted on white boards near team areas. Stats reports (number of calls handled, average handle time, etc.) are e-mailed daily. Associates are even required to keep a running personal daily tally and turn it in each week as a sort of unofficial reporting mechanism which is still e-mailed out to the team. Within the Workplace Guidance business unit there is also a drive that pits all sites against one another, competitively speaking. Westlake prides itself on being "relentless" and even encourages dishonest tactics to provide an unfair advantage such as working unscheduled overtime in order to take more phonecalls than other sites.