Commonwealth Financial Network Reviews

Cons

There is a good amount of change in the air. This is hard on people, as change always is. I do; however, trust the senior leaders on the direction that is being set and I see communication improving already. Senior leadership and HR do seem to really listen and they affect change as they are able. Things cannot transform overnight, especially when done thoughtfully and correctly. While this does create ambiguity in the short term, there is so much to be excited about and this firm walks the walk in my experience.

Cons

i dislike how the bonus is provided to employees and how it is tied to stuff not relevant to us.

Cons

The issues with Commonwealth are all over the place. CEO forcing return to office despite managers, directors, and VPs agreeing "our teams work best when remote". Your coworkers are either remote or in another state, so you'll end up on video calls anyways, struggling to hear yourself above everyone else calls around you. Execs are constantly talking about 'building culture' , but there's nothing to show for it. Employees have no time to attend anything during work hours and no energy to attend anything afterwards. Stock options are no longer given to all employees meeting their work expectations, just the top 3 per department, despite management advocating against this policy. The annual bonus has gone from 15-20% to ~5%. They tried to disguise this by splitting what we used to get into 2 additional bonuses throughout the year tied to customer satisfaction levels, ignoring that those levels will never be hit due to chronic understaffing and overpromising to clients. Some departments used to have multi-month training plans that are getting cut down to weeks, and clients can tell. With all of this, Commonwealth has continued to drain itself of talent as people see the writing on the wall. Their most recent Employee Survey had no room to provide criticism/improvement, a stark change from prior years' surveys.

Cons

After the annual review process screwed over an obscene amount of high performing employees due to “miscommunication” by upper management you would think that would be the worst of it. Upper management brings zero to table which causes teams to pick up the slack and employees (specifically management) are stuck doing the work of 3 employees. When you express these concerns in a professional manner to HR and upper management, no changes occur because all CFN cares about is saving money and they won’t appropriately staff teams to be successful. Instead they are leaving directors and SVPs in their roles when they add no value and rely on managers and supervisors to handle everything leading to extreme burn out. Not to mention the people that are handling all the work aren’t even paid appropriately unless they are being protected by someone higher up.

Cons

Where to start on the downfall of CFN? After hearing for years how well we're all doing working from home during the pandemic we were told by Wayne Bloom that the reason we didn't make the service score is because we're all working from home. No mention of how awful the technology has been, which is apparent in the daily Advisor Feedback where advisors consistently complain about the horrible technology due to the poorly planned spinoff of Advisor 360. Our work from home policy later turned into 3 days in the office no matter what, with no flexibility to that rule - the company would rather us use PTO than work from home when we're sick. Not to mention, Wayne sits in his office counting badge swipes to make sure we're following this stupid rule. After changing the yearly review process and claiming to give employees more money with a 10% raise, CFN has made bonuses unattainable. Inflation is at an all time high and this company thinks it's perfectly fine to give their employees a 3% raise and a 4% bonus? A 4% bonus isn't even the equivalent of a paycheck for 2 weeks after taxes get taken out. It's an insult to your employees who consistently work hard every single day to make this company run smooth and we get slapped in the face by getting poorer in this economy. Meanwhile, the c-suite is filling their pockets and blaming the worker bees for us not attaining our bonus goals. It's unbelievable. It's truly a disgrace. And they're doing this all so that they can save some money with their ridiculous 1 trillion goal of AUM. Worse yet is that this company isn't taking care of their employees or replacing ones who have quit for better opportunities at new companies leaving many departments severely understaffed. People are leaving in astronomical numbers, people that have been with the company for years and are in an incredibly high position are leaving. If that doesn't tell you to run, I'm not sure what will. This company used to constantly promote from within and actually develop their employees. Meanwhile, an incredible employee within the finance department was constantly turned down for promotions for years and not given any good reason for it. Despite the lack of growth offered to her, she still worked hard and finally left this company for a better job elsewhere last month. That department is so severely understaffed that every single person is miserable and upper management is doing nothing to help fill the void she left. This company is letting their best employees walk out the door and doing nothing to ease the burden off their other employees.

Cons

You will not get respect or treated fairly in their web department. You'll be taken advantage of. overworked, underpaid, and worse your managers will gladly throw you under the bus or claim it's your fault when they can't do their job. They have several, highly experienced mid-range developers they keep at the junior level just to underpay them. You can't be a junior with 5+ years of experience. I had to work behind my boss's back to get projects done because they wanted to cancel needed work simply because someone didn't do the paperwork properly... My boss had no clue what was going on in his department because he wouldn't sit in meetings or have meaningful conversations with the team he would constantly throw our projects in disarray. His boss, completely ignored everyone, all our pleas and complaints.

Cons

Former CTO was disconnected from the day to day needs of team, focus on their personal projects

Cons

Pay should be more competitive. You’re fully vested on your 401k after 4 years. You have to pay for parking for the downtown location. There could be more diversity in the company especially in top management positions. Medical insurance could be better. Some advisors and their offices can be rude and demanding sometimes treating you as if you work for them. For this position you are always on the phone which can be tiring especially on busy seasons. CEO is mandating people to report to offices 3 days instead of 2 but downsized the San Diego office to one floor with not enough desks for everyone. Frankly, it doesn’t make sense. Most employees can conduct their job responsibilities and duties more efficiently and happier at home. We got through the whole pandemic working remote and everyone was happy and our numbers were still good. We’ve continued to receive awards for our great service to advisors. I don’t understand the fixation with forcing people to commute to work and literally do the same thing they can do at home. You have to spend on gas, $150+ a month on parking. You should empower your employees to decide what work scenario works for them.

Cons

Where to begin... first, the remote work policy. Mandatory 3 days on premises. Last summer, the CEO himself said if you have symptoms of illness and need to work remotely, that's fine, that wasn't the intention of the new policy, and that they weren't going to be counting badge swipes. Now, they're literally doing just that. The company would literally rather your productivity be ZERO and use PTO than have you work remotely if you have a cold but could still work, which completely contradicts the reasoning behind the policy, which was to increase collaboration and improve the advisor satisfaction score. In operations, having a person out of the office means 60-80 cases not getting worked on that day that could have been. Secondly, the policy contradicts the company's illusion of diversity and inclusion. Nobody working an operations job could afford to rent in a town that's truly easily accessible to the office without living with several roommates. Now, consider that a disproportionate number of people of color live in communities that are entirely impossible to reasonably access the office three days a week. To do what? Bury your face in a computer screen to have Teams meetings you could have had at home anyways. The C-level is all white, the CEOs reports are (almost) all white, but there are a few women. There's no reward for hard work. You can score a 4/5 on your annual review and still be punched in the gut with a 3% standard pay increase, which for the record, does not even meet inflation in 2023 to 2024. So essentially, don't bother trying hard, it won't matter anyways. Why? Because even the bonus is garbage. They changed the bonus structure to effectively gut most of the annual bonus, and then proceeded to move the goal posts up until the day our annual reviews and compensation were made available, so even top performers got less than anticipated. It's almost like the poor communication around how the bonus funding and pool would work was completely intentional so they could tailor it to whatever fit a budget they had already predetermined. The company is so focused on their trillion dollar goal, they will sacrifice anything, including incredible talent, employee morale, and their integrity.

Cons

Company bonuses are tied to service scores from the customers, but some customers will state that we do a great job but refuse to give a high rating on principle (e.g. no one deserves a high score).