It's worse than I could have even imagined. We lost more than half of our team in the last three months. Getting their positions backfilled is not going great, either. I don't know if it's the lack of good candidates or if the management is not even trying, but I do know that it's making our lives miserable. Get us some help before we all keel over!
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On one of the townhalls Q&A the question was asked: "Most countries have high inflation (US is 7%) while annual salary increases are 1.75-2.25%. How is the company to retain talent with -5% annual decreases on real term".
Answer by leadership: "We have used data from our providers to determine guidance on country-specific merit increases, taking into account inflation in each country. We recognize that inflation has been high in many countries, but we also need to strike a balance with affordability and our synergy targets."
Here is your answer why the attrition is bad and why it will get a he-l of a lot worse soon.
LSEG current offer for hire new employees (engineers) is approx 50% below market rate in competitive markets (which is pretty much everywhere currently). To this you can add the -5% annual salary increase on real terms (2% nominal increase when inflation is 7%).
Putting these two together no surprise that attrition is terrible. It is a surprise that it is not a lot worse.
If the company continues down this road this will get a lot worse rather soon (short of some sudden recession), especially as this starts feeding itself. Nobody wants to be the last man standing in a severly understaffed, overstressed and underpaid department.
Peeps the markets are hot and I left for a 60% rise. Get out while you can and take advantage of the job market. Sure my new company has its issues and my new manager is crazy hyper for results but I’m taking home so much more.
What is A class talent in your view? If you are A class you’d be headhunted left right and centre. You’d be calling the shots no? And if they are as you said A class , they will do amazing things for themselves and go on to be successful, is that a bad outcome?
Every day I hear of more very talented people who are either leaving or are are being pushed out (today I heard of 2 people in London who were top of their game, industry experts pushed out due to inane business restructuring), they will certainly end up in a company that will compete with Refinitiv as more nimble and intelligent companies transform what is a very legacy business model. You have to ask, is Refinitiv senior management just stupid or just so disconnected from the real world? Why would you let A class talent leave the company when you have a clear retention issue?
LOL worrying about that ELT. They were terrible, and only in it for the exit payoff.
They never cared about building a Bloomberg ki---r. They just said that was the goal.
The real goal was finding the Greater Fool after buying Reuters. And they did, in LESG, with the help of another storied institution.
So it goes.
On the technology front it is very worrying, Refinitiv has an awful reputation for service provision, outages everywhere day across a number of products, things are only going to get worse as institutional knowledge is lost and corners are cut to realise synergy savings promised as part of LSEG acquisition. The real problem is that nobody cares any more as all of the loyalty and good will has been lost through incompetent management. I worked for Reuters and was proud of the company and would do what I could to support it, I feel no such loyalty to LSEG and from what I hear nor do others.
It’s not just technology, sales is hemorrhaging good sales people. The announcement today of Ron Lefferts as CRO is very bad news, I worked with him at IBM, he has zero leadership skills. I talk to people at Refinitiv who agree, no wonder sales people are leaving in droves with this level of incompetent management.
It's only going to speed up when people have collected their bonuses in March. It'll be interesting to see how a technology organisation with these levels of attrition operates. They'll probably throw more work to the "scale partners" which will go as well as it always does.
Agreed and getting worse from what I see in department where I work. As expected it is also many of the good people leaving. More layoffs coming in March which is only going to make things worse. LSEG must be questioning what they bought as much of the institutional knowledge has walked out of the door over the past 12-18 months, the entire Refinitiv ELT will have gone by end of March and many of the next level down. There was some good leadership amongst this group which alas is now sadly lacking in the new senior management. Talking to a senior manager a few weeks ago they commented on "the toxic culture that exists" that was so evident at the last town hall. As for the Glint survey's they are a joke as any perceived negative comments are dismissed as minority concerns. My guess is that this level of attrition will continue whilst poor management exists.