analyst

manager

senior analyst

member experience specialist

director

OMERS

**No Work From Home (used to be 2 days a week)- new leadership team has removed WFH insisting it doesn’t boost productivity. Majority of employees travel more than 1 hr each way to/from work which is tiring.
**No Flexible Work Hours - used to be allowed to do your 8 hours whichever time you decide to start/leave. Employees now need to come in latest 9am and leave earliest 4pm each day and stick to same schedule every day. This can be stressful for those of us who don’t live Downtown
**Increase to work hours to 37.5hrs/week (used to be 36.35hrs/week) – was done under premise of “work harmonization” but seems to also be form of cost savings by making employees work more hours for the same annual salary (lower hourly rate).
**Nepotism- seems to be a common theme that many family members/relatives are being hired without much thought into conflicts of interest. Especially concerning pertaining to management employees hiring family members
**High Employee Turnover – at the highest level in the last 10 years; especially high among newer and young employees. This also impacts remaining team members/managers due to added responsibilities, pressure to meet service levels
**Low Employee Morale- At the lowest level in years and although you cannot see it on their faces, employees often share their frustration/animosity amongst themselves. This seems to be due to all the changes made outlined here
**Long Service Employees being let go- Employees with years of experience and no direct involvement with the “failed project” have been let go for unclear reasons. 
**Cuts to Work Life Balance/Days off- removal of summer days (used to have a half day for every other Friday in the summer) and flex days. What used to be 2 float days and 4 work life balance days have been replaced with 5 “OMERS days. Also, used to be 1 additional week of vac for employees with 10 years service (now  15 years). Volunteer days used to be paid time off, now you need to take an unpaid day off or use a vac day. 
**Handpicked promotions- Numerous instances in pension operations as well as client services with a lack of transparency. Annoys other employees who end up complaining things are not fair 
**Rapid Increases to Productivity/Performance Metrics/Expectations– steady yearly increases to productivity measures and performance objectives. Employees are working harder than ever, feeling stressed out, mentally exhausted, not having time to take breaks/lunches, putting in extra hours after work
**Wasteful Activities/Events-emphasis on incentivizing people who participate in non-core work related initiatives such as volunteer committees, social events, etc by increasing the weight of “strategic initiatives” on total performance. Meanwhile reducing weight of core work related score. Are these “extra-curricular” activities wasteful spending if the majority of employees don’t willingly participate and there is no increase to employee engagement/productivity? Ex) Diversity/Social Committee, “Dialogue Series” involving 3rd party consulting firm. Employees are “forced,” “voluntold,” pressured to participate in events, witness fireside chats, attend social events (pressure from the VP/SVP?) 
**Inefficient Use of Budget-Teams with unclear mandates such as Agility, Digital, Internal Controls which arguably are not providing value/benefit and leading to budge cuts in more important areas. Disproportionately high number of senior pension analysts, managers, directors within Pension Services which are taking up valuable budget room.
**Inefficient Feedback Mechanisms- not much room for honest thoughts/concerns from employees at coffee chats with management due to fear of reprisals. “Anonymous” corporate wide Employee Engagement Surveys are administered online via email link. Prevents employees from expressing honest opinions due to fear of being “tracked” (privacy concerns).
We need to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves what is the priority of the department? Deep reflection and pause for thought is needed. This does not need to be taboo subject. Let’s talk about it openly and avoid the elephant in the room. Clearly something does not seem right as we can tell. There are more questions than answers. 

Do we want to be a “World-class” organization and industry leader for employees? Or do we want to be mediocre and never make the annual “GTA’s Top 50 Employers” list again?

Does it make sense to have the “failed project” be a budgetary constraint on pension Services for years to come? OR should we just move on and not cry over spilt milk?

Does it make more sense to have sleep deprived workers not working at full potential 5 days in the office? OR would it be better to have energized/rested employees who work a day or 2 a week from home?


Does Pension Services deserve the same level of respect as other areas of OMERS such as the Investment Management Team? OR is Pension Services just not as vital to the success of the company?

Do we want to take an old-fashioned/discipline approach to the work environment or Do we want to take a modern/flexible approach (work from home included) and attract “top-talent”?

Do we want to only focus on driving productivity/performance or do we want reach a better balance while fostering employee well-being and a balanced work/life balance?

Who is to blame for all these issues? Is the employees who are used to being given so much over the years, that a simple regression to the mean is troublesome? OR are any of the Vp, Svp, President, CEO to blame for state of things?

Do employees have justified reasons to be disgruntled? OR are they overreacting by a series of changes that leaves them with a lot of positives?

In summary, is the glass half-empty of half-full in OMERS Pension Services? You be the judge.

Work from home has been taken away completely. This is by far the biggest sense of frustration in the department. Management doesn’t trust employees to get work done at home. There were definitely employees who abused the Work from Home program. This is management’s responsibility for not holding these people accountable and making bad hiring decisions in the first place. The abusers were mainly newer employees while the long service employees worked diligently/more effectively at home. Can they just not hire “adults” instead next time or atleast punish them only? It’s also become a 9AM curfew to get into the office. Imagine a workplace in the modern era that treats employees like school kids. Looks discriminatory to anyone who lives far away or has a unique situation that requires them to come in later than 9AM. Leads to stress, pressure, lost sleep. Yet, there is a core of employees who are persistently late, while everyone else sweats it out trying to get in by curfew. This has led to chronic sleep deprivation which negatively impacts work quality and extremely unhealthy. Employees are consistently feeling “tired” and run out of energy by mid-week. Unfortunately one of the first topics of discussion is always about lack of sleep and tiredness. This is NOT a work environment worthy of attracting “Top Talent.” 

Management has a grand plan to make transactional processing employees become quasi client service representatives. Quite an interesting idea, yet carries many flaws. Would employees willingly take part without any increase to their salary or any incentive for that matter? No one seems happy with this initiative and there are now political ads plastered all over the walls trying to convince more volunteers to join the trial run. It’s a constant campaign and a bit annoying that they are trying to convince everyone into accepting it as ok. Looking around the office, you would think we are in the midst of an election. Unfortunately, analysts and a few others have been handpicked to volunteer mostly against their will (voluntold). Talk about giving people added duties beyond their original job description. Did it not click to management that if someone really wanted to make calls the whole day, they would just apply for a client services job in the first place? Oddly enough management is now claiming this program is “non-mandatory.” Yet they are still “pressuring” employees to join with cleverly worded sharepoint articles. Will these people get on the same page already? Seems to be miscommunication amongst upper management, which is an obvious sign of dysfunction in the upper ranks. This is quite absurd. Its equivalent to being pressured to enlist in the military and then being told later its “voluntary” after the generals see they are losing the war and it looks completely hopeless.  Any campaign that may lead to job cuts in the client services department is simply unacceptable. Seems management does want to cut some of the client services workforce to further bring down costs in the department. Our CSRS do a fantastic job/specialized and deeming them useless or disposable is completely unwarranted.

There is more focus on volunteering for committees and event planning then of actually doing the work at hand. This has also made the managers lives more difficult because some team members are not at their desks much of the day. Combine this with the short staff situation and you have difficulty as a team to meet service levels. Sending people to volunteer at the call centre is another example. Rest of the team is left taking on burden of the work and end up stressed and overworked. There’s a core group of “serial volunteers” who think they don’t need to do any real work. They believe volunteering will be the shortcut to moving up the corporate ladder; a way to circumvent the system designed to promote fairness and merit based promotions. In essence, its hindering the natural, peaceful, harmonious flow of work life we once enjoyed. In a professional company, you would think volunteering wouldn’t be the main focus. For some reason, upper management seems ok with all the volunteering. Maybe upper level management has certain KPOs which they need the help of their junior employees to fulfill for them? If you are an outgoing “social butterfly” or enjoy pretending to be one, this is the perfect situation for you. Sucks if you are an introvert. Maybe we will soon have an OMERS band, choir, chess club, cross country team, swim team, environmental club? This is all a total waste of plan member contributions. Surely we can more efficiently manage the pension administrative expenses.

Work life balance is really bad. Employees are now working harder than ever before and hardly anyone has time to take their two 15 minute breaks and full lunch break. Some even end up working extra hours to catch up. The expectations have increased to extraordinary levels. There is no doubt why employee satisfaction is really bad as they have slowly taken things away and forced them to work harder. It’s a total disregard for employee well-being. Management thinks they can squeeze every last drop of productivity from each worker to keep budget costs low. This will only last so long before employees burn themselves out to the brink of mental exhaustion.  If you are thinking of joining the department, think carefully about the lack of work life balance. You won’t have much time for breaks and will be overloaded with work with high expectations.

Great company but some key issues in the Pension Services department:

-nepotism: tons of family ties, HR has turned a blind eye and upper management doesn’t care about conflicts of interest
-poor work life balance: employees working harder than ever before and hardly anyone has time to take their two 15 minute breaks and full lunch break. 
-high employee turnover: mix of bad hires, new hires jumping ship, older employees retiring coincidentally during COVID. Employees simply not happy anymore and want to leave.
-volunteering is favoured by management and key to promotions. Unfortunately they think its high school and think volunteering for committees is more important that actual work 
-“anonymous surveys” administered electronically: be careful with these. Rumour is they can cut people for voicing differing opinions
-fake diversity commitments-seems forced and buzzword of the day in every meeting/email from upper management. Yet, its non-existent in Pension Operations. 
-frequent restructuring/firings: happens so often now and staff left in dark as to why. Totally confusing/demoralizing to see some hard working/top performing peers randomly fired. This happens even during busy periods and during COVID nonetheless. No valid reasons given only to see them replace them with cheap new hires. I find it hard to concentrate under this environment of uncertainty, confusion, fear, chronic stress. 

Voluntold shuld be the Meridian-Webster word of the year. It’s demoralizing, stressful, time consuming, and so much more when the VP is constantly pressuring me to voluntelll my team members to attend non-work related fireside chats, social events, team events n more. My team members now look at me in disdain, think I was voluntellling them to join. Me? It’s the VP and SVP! This culture of forcing, pressuring, voluntellling employees against their will is toxic and doesnt do anyone any good. Its total hypocrisy! They promote the Seven Grandfather Teachings (LOVE, RESPECT, BRAVERY, TRUTH, HONESTY, HUMILITY, WISDOM) yet the VP and SVP are telling me to be dishonest with my employees. Its absurd! How is there any honesty into forcing employees to watch a uninformative fireside chat with an executive. This same fireside chat happens once per year. Please, can the VP and SVP just be more honest with managers and employees. Every one on one I have with my employees they always ask about work from home being removed. VP and SVP tell us managers to only say its a “management decision” no other comment allowed. Absollutely dis-honest. One year later the VP thinks its appropriate to back track and tell employees its due to decline in productivity that they took away work from home. I guess the VP got tired of telling systematic lies. This culture of secrecy, dis-honesty, withholding information is horrible!

Not the place it used to be. All kinds of issues that should make you rethink coming here. Was formerly a great company however. 

ISSUES:
-nepotism: tons of family ties, HR has turned a blind eye and upper management doesn’t care about conflicts of interest
-poor work life balance: employees working  harder than ever before and hardly anyone has time to take their two 15 minute breaks and full lunch break. 
-high employee turnover: mix of bad hires, over ambitious new hires jumping ship, and now record retirements coincidentally happening in short time span. Employees simply not happy anymore and want to leave
-volunteering is favoured by management and key to promotions. Unfortunately they think its high school and think volunteering for committees is more important that actual work 
-fake diversity commitments-seems forced and buzzword of the day in every meeting/email from upper management. 
-hard work is not rewarded: why do people missing for half the day paid the same as hard workers? Will this make hard workers want to stay or find another job?

First I would like to say I am disappointed. OMERS is billion dollar company with 3000 employees globally. They lack simple systems and people are old schooled and extremely hierarchal.
A senior person in this team has told me that this company chooses to fire rather than to develop. They treat everyone like disposable things. 
Everything in this company is for seniors and people managers. As juniors or lower ranking people there is no resources. It is always to please the big guys. 
My role became more of a book keeper/ finance assistant  as advertised and expected of me in the beginning when I interviewed. I am extremely disappointed I brought up my struggles to my boss fell on deaf ears and did not essentially train me. Got annoyed when I asked further.

This company preaches work life balance but there is not one. People are working overtime after hours and weekends. Some teams probably does it but often times there is no balance. 

Overall it is not as amazing as a place that I had thought I truly did not enjoy my time at OMERS and have only gotten depression from the experience. 

Had reasonable high hopes for my career at OMERS, but had a very disappointing experience. They constantly hire people on contracts and did not honor what they hired me for. There was constant management struggles and internal conflict beyond my imagination. There seems to be a lot of favoritism/conflict based on your ethnic of origin/race. I didn't feel a general reasonable level of respect as a temp employee/affiliate. I felt I was hired only to "help" management without any opportunity to progress in the organization in the long run. Constant above average power struggles (In my humble opinion). Preferred people can feel free to go to the cafeteria / get coffee etc.

Pension Services department is doing very bizarre thing by re-hiring previously fired employees. This is unheard of. Looks really odd to outsiders and puts the company's reputation at stake. Cringe-worthy. Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess? Why are we bringing back old culture that was terrible? (we had to fire ppl for not working hard, doing shady stuff). Management is bringing back friends/family even though they have shady track records. Doesn't inspire confidence at all. I'm considering leaving my job now as this is becoming really strange.

The experience you will get here is second to none. You are  engaging with the public, both the good and bad parts of that. Your going to be sent to situations where your are uncomfortable but it's all a great learning experience. Your team is amazing, always ready, willing and able to help you out at any turn. The company pays for training, shoe allowance and even parts of school and extra activities that go towards bettering yourself. The hours are flexible, you able to pick up extra shifts as you wish. 
Everyone that gets here moves on straight into law enforcement, special constables, by law, court security or other prestigious positions. A great place to work if you can get in.

Roles at OMERS are well paid and well staffed.  The work life balance is very good and things generally move at a steady pace.  Due to the lack of organic growth in a pension plan, opportunities to advance are few and far between and they tend to hire externally when they arise. 

Front office roles are well supported, goal orientated and generally appear to have strong culture.  

Corporate roles, in risk, finance, operations and pension admin are riddled with ego and politics.  Which can be great if you have very strong EQ.  However, in these roles quality of work will have nothing to do with your success.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Analyst 16 salaries reported	$84,092 per year
Manager 3 salaries reported	$115,667 per year
Senior analyst 7 salaries reported	$101,714 per year
Member experience specialist 5 salaries reported	$61,000 per year
Director 3 salaries reported	$163,333 per year

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