Reed Elsevier Group Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Reed Elsevier Group full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Good benefits and some perks

Cons – Management that is so out of touch with reality and more important, it's employees. People stay for their paycheck and lack of options.
Constant daily changes with no regard of what employees already do, and they never consult those who do the job to see if even feasible.
Lower level employees are held accountable for all management decisions. Management is never held accountable.
If you disagree you're fired.
No internal advancement, they only load up staff with no opinion staffers.
No women to upper management. Men rule at all levels.

Advice to Senior Management – Wake up! Morale is in the toilet and after all these years I repairable. Don't know anyone, and I've been here 10+ years likes where they work, or would ever speak up because of daily fear drilled into us.
I'd say listen to your employees....but trust factor left long ago, as was respect.
Practice your own company values!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Reed Elsevier Group

Pros – Salary was OK if you worked overtime. Team I worked in was good and we were able to attend some training.

Cons – Bad decisions and complete lack of communication from senior management. So poor that the directors outsourced devisions to an Indian company. No thought of employee welfare what so ever.

Advice to Senior Management – N/A

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Reed Elsevier Group

Pros – Great co-workers, until they left for better places to work

Cons – Management is so unknowledgeable about the business that they constantly hire outside consultants to tell them what to do. We've seen every one you can name. Bain, McKenzie, Monitor, PWC, and others. They even had an initiative one year on "Innovation." And of course, Crispin Davis hired an outside consulting firm and paid them millions of dollars to run an "innovation" program. Be innovative, or else!!! In that program, of the ideas that "won," and were therefore funded, none ever came to anything. The one I was most aware of was quietly killed after about two years, having achieved absolutely none of its objectives and having cost a ton of money. OF COURSE all this was funded by cutting programs for normal everyday business. True innovation, either by ongoing improvement, or leapfrog ideas, is smothered, because management doesn't trust people with ideas. They only trust people with MBAs from a specific handful of business schools and then only if they have had work experience with-- you guessed it, those consulting firms.

The senior management of Reed Elsevier Group doesn't know enough about the companies in the group to be able to assess the decision-making and leadership of the management teams for the divisions.

Advice to Senior Management – Crispin Davis is being replaced. To the new guy I say: look very very carefully at what is going on, especially in the United States. Read all the reviews on Glassdoor.com about all the RE companies. There is a lot of concern and complaints about outsourcing, but even putting that issue aside, you need to be aware that the management of these companies is abysmal. Oh, and by the way, all that outsourcing? Check into whether the cost savings are really there over the long term. And further, what will be the ultimate incremental cost if you try to repair the significant loss in quality (a concern which is being brushed aside, as the message gets massaged at each level as it goes up the management chain).

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend