Zero – null points – nowt – not a bean – nothing.“Be glad you have a job you horrid urchin"That’s the thanks we get for the record year in 2008, and the supposed full order book for Q1 in 2009.I’ve never paid any notice to the PA gripers on here, but this really has to be the ultimate kick in the teeth for our loyalty over the year

is that across the board or dependent upon performance at all?

OP, What/Who are your sources?Feedback on 2008 performance starts next week and we don't find out bonus payments, pay rises etc. until late Feb / early March.I think you are telling porkies...

that is not really different from industry where the credit crunsh also hit hard. Company with zero or negative EBITDA are also giving zero salary increase and are also reducing headcount. It sounds crap: be happy that you have a job......:-(

I suggest you speak to your CTL, if you haven’t aleady done so.I’ve been told that there are no payrises for at least the first six months of the year, and that the company “hopes” to have no redundancies, but that the situation would be reviewed at half year

What did you except? Your lack of a grasp of reality astounds me!!!!

I wouldn't be surprised for those on 1s (obviously) and 2s, would be a kick in proverbials for those on 3s and 4s though. Not formally communicated til March though, there have been many a rumour full of hot air on here before.

Its all about bonus at PA anyway - the base pay is dire, it would take a 20% payrise to get most to market rates. That's why a 30-50% bonus sounds nice, but isn't quite as nice as it seems. Although the total reward is fine as long as you do get a good bonus.

Yup - spoke to my manager on Friday, to be told no payrises for the first 6 months. The situation on redundancies will be reviewed then.No bonuses for 1s and 2s this year either.So much for all the clap trap thats spouted by our partners on what a great year we've hand, and 2009 will be just as good, blah blah blah

OK, I'm not buying the zero pay rise line apart from people on 1's. There is still hiring taking place in the open market so the most likely outcome of PA constraining pay rises for people on 3's and 4's would be that these employees would be more likely to look for opportunities outside the firm.Even allowing for the downturn, PA will seek to hold on to its highest performing staff - the indirect costs of voluntary turnover in this group (loss of experience, cost of re-hiring, lost fees for jobs sold but not started due to lack of experience / resource etc) would far outweigh the cost to the organisation of a small pay rise.

What are you “not buying” Zack?? Go and speak to your CTL who can confirm this for you.Let me spell it out for you ...NO PAYRISES FOR SIX MONTHS, IRRESPECTIVE OF PERFORMANCE RATINGThe company have all the cards here – no-one in their right mind would want to leave in the current environment, so they can get away with zero pay rises for 3s and 4s. This is all despite our leadership team constantly reminding us of how well the company is doing, and how we are sitting on £200m+ cash in the bank.

I think you are jumping the gun a little here. Firstly, a lot of people will just be happy to keep onto their jobs in the current crisis. Secondly, whereas a lot of other consulting firms are hiding their troubles, PA might be in fact taking proactive measures to make sure it retains as much of its staff as possible. If freezing pay is part of that process it is something you should accept. I am sure you will see a lot more redundancies in the consulting sector after firms realise that Q1 results are lower than expected and that the books are not looking quite empty in the middle of Q2.

I don't understand why people post complaints and gripes about their own employer on a website. What exactly do you hope to gain by doing this? Don't you have friends with whom you can grumble in the pub?If you're unhappy with your employer, then get another job. If you can't or don't want to do this, then that probably explains why your employer does not feel obliged to increase your pay.

i'm a finance-news junkie, so sorry if this is missing the point of those complaining, but: 5% pay rise made sense when we had inflation, to keep pay in line with costs... inflation is heading to zero and there is possibility of short-term deflation... so 0% pay rise does not necessarily leave you any worse off at all - you could even be better off than with 5% pay rise in previous years... pay rises will be very important in a few years if predictions of hyper-inflation prove accurate

That is a fatuous remark, both in detail and in taste. ACNer no doubt. Go and draw me a thoroughly incomprehensible, breathtakingly non-sensical process map in viso..go easy on the font mindZB

I can't imagine what you think the word fatuous means. 0% payrise with 0% inflation is not different to 5% payrise with 5% inflation. How is this a fatuous point to note?Presumably you hope to one day receive a 10% payrise with inflation at 12%. Good luck to you. I hope this is exactly what you get.

Far be it for me to agree with ZB yet I suspect the fatuousness to which he / she refers is the fact that inflation is NOT zero or less and sits at greater than 2% currently. Any decent graph will demonstrate that only when inflation is less than a pay rise will benefit accrue to an employee. Please post again when / if inflation is zero or less.I face the same issue at my own company re likely lack of pay rise. It is useful to post on a forum such as this as I see very few of my own colleagues from week-to-week although many customers and suppliers.I would agree, however, that many of us are now developing a very different undertsanding of the real nature of our relationship with our employer as a result of the current financial circumstances.

Excuse my ignorance but whats a CTL ???? Definitely not a PA term and so I think the original poster is just making this all up. We have Line Managers, not CTLs

As far as I can make out, CTL is an old BOP term. The only reference to it that I have found interchanges CTL with Line Manager.

My guess is that "Peed off at PA" is a digruntled ex-PAer who was fired from BOP couple of years ago - Not difficult to see why. Get a life, mate instead of spreading lies. CTL, my foot.

Hot off the press. No payrises (apart from promotions), but bonuses will be up on last year.

What is the latest point you can join the firm in the year and receive a bonus - or is it paid pro-rata based on months in the firm?

CTL = Consulting Team Leader...from an ex PA employee, who got out a while ago and has never looked back.

Bonuses up ?? Not what my line manager (CTL) has told me.There is also a major risk of redundancies at half year

"Thanks for all your hard work - we had a very very good 2008.As you may recall, we have £150m in the bank, so much in fact that we don't even know what to do with it.You'll note that we haven't increased your travel allowance since 2007, and that your pay rise last year was based in part on your averaged pay in 2006/2007, so we're pleased to confirm that against a background of significant inflation in living costs that we've come to a conclusion on your performance related pay.As you outperformed your colleagues over the last year and won't be promoted for another year or two because things are a bit quiet we will be recognising all of the above by giving you a commensurate pay rise.Congratulations on your pay rise - here's the award letter to confirm it - well done. Sorry you heard about your pay rise from colleagues who'd read about first it on-line."

This reminds me of LogicaCMG I left thes monkeys 3 years ago because they treated staff like sh*te, which was a shame because CMG was such a dynamic company until the dreaded logica came a long and ruined it!

Interestng that PA can't find something to do with that money....hardly a great use of shareholder funds. Plus at the moment you need to be careful which bank it is in!

anon - "hardly a great use of shareholder funds."this would be a more insightful comment if PA had external shareholders.One of my friends has just been made redundant from a different line of work which paid £28k and involved very long hours doing difficult work (yes, even people who are paid less might work long hours doing difficult work! they haven't necessarily had the option of city work and chosen the other end of the work-life seesaw)no payrise on a fat salary is no big deal when there are still bonuses around. It only seems it if you're surrounded entirely by people living in the same bubble.I don't expect anybody on this board to agree, of course.

Are there so many people out there ignorant to the fact that there are 100's/1000's of redundancies being made and so many talented people competitive for the same job. Be happy that 1. you have a job and 2. you will be paid a bonus.PA base salaries + bens are not that much different to the Big 4 and other consultanciesIn this climate, maybe less complaining and more focus on your job, might ensure you will still have a job in 6 months time, with recruitment freezes in place in most firms, is not a candidate friendly market!

PA payrise is an oxymoron

During my time at PA I have received generous payrises and very material bonuses. I have worked at big 4 firms and know what they pay - my package stacks up very favourably to what I would get there.I do not know what will happen this year, and I'm certainly not going to go on what I read here, but as has been said further up this thread, there are worse things that could happen to you in this economy than not receiving a payrise.

"this would be a more insightful comment if PA had external shareholders" PA has internal shareholders (the employees) and therefore the issue is the same, if you can't find anything useful to do with this money return it to shareholders in dividend (whilst keeping enough for day to day management of the business).By holding large amounts of cash you are effectively saying..."we (the mangement team) can't think of anything to do with the equity you have trusted us with, other than put it in a bank account where it will obtain a basic rate of interest (which is something you as a shareholder could have done)"...pretty typical of PA and one of the reasons why they have failed to grow and expand. Lack of ambition and balls to do something.

I am not gonna get fussed about this TOOL!!!

"pretty typical of PA and one of the reasons why they have failed to grow and expand. Lack of ambition and balls to do something."Last time PA had a pile of cash it bought another consultancy company, that ended up a pretty stupendous waste of cash after most of the acquired staff left. The other alternative - return the money to shareholders - is also an option, but given all the biggest shareholders are evidently partners I actually admire PA for not just sticking a huge wedge at partners to go and buy a Ferrari or whatever it is that makes their life happy now their wife has left them and the kids hate them. You could argue that PA should have done something with its cash before now, but as it is it's very lucky to have a pile in the bank. In every sector, the winners (or the "least losers") will be those who have cash at hand in the next year, for many other consultancies, their only cash management strategy is to manage the main overhead - headcount.

You must struggle with investment, do I give it to the company that will give me a return or one that will keep it in a bank.....difficult one.And before anyone jumps in I know the shareholders are staff and haven't actually injected any equity; the principle is still the same though PA has failed to grow and develop over the years, thats fine its a plodder never going to set the world on fire but if you stand still too long you get eaten

"if you stand still too long you get eaten"? It sounds like you used to work in a bank. Perhaps having cash reserves isnt such a bad idea in the current economic climate? Consulting has always been subject to peaks and troughs of economic cycles. usually it is the first to be hit as spending is reigned in. So having a contingency fund for such an eventuality is a bad idea? Perhaps we wait and see which firms survive the crash of 2009 before judging that one!

Agree cash at the moment is very useful, issue is PA has had this pile for a while. Fair play to them for not handing it out to partners, they just need some ambition or a clear strategy for the firm.

This is bullshit. For those of us that are performing well, this is a big kick in the nuts. The best people are still leaving PA, and I'll be one of the next ones...

"The best people are still leaving PA"How could it be? The best people never joined PA

"This is bullshit. For those of us that are performing well, this is a big kick in the nuts. The best people are still leaving PA, and I'll be one of the next ones..."Me too. As far as I'm concerned I've significantly out performed my peers who are sitting on the bench twiddling their thumbs and wondering why their annual utilisation never gets north of 60%. There's no good reason for us all to get a pay cut which given inflation is above zero is effectively what it is. My line manager gave me the "time are tough blah blah blah" guff last week but since then I've had calls from several headhunters recruiting for roles paying more base salary and with more annual leave.

Oh yes... the old annual leave chestnut is a good one in PA. 23 days is well below industry norms. Be happy though that in your tenth year of servitude you are given a one off (not to be repeated in later years) additional day’s leave.PA Consulting’s attitude towards its staff has come into sharp relief in this downturn, where they can really exploit staff’s vulnerability while bolstering partner profits and bonuses. Despicable way to treat staff.

could be worse. You could be EDS !

CTL man, are you serious about the 23 day (+ 1 massive extra day on the 10th year) holiday thing???????????????????Surely after 10 years 30 days holiday would be more like it?

"Surely after 10 years 30 days holiday would be more like it?"In the public sector, maybe. In the private sector, surely not.

30 days is what we get at acn from the start

30 days paid notice?

"30 days is what we get at acn from the start"PA's very own "Yes Sir Alan" has let it be known that he doesn't much like PA staff posting on here. With 23 days leave less the 3 days assigned at xmas, PA's holiday entitlement is completely rubbish for a job that requires a huge level of commitment, and frequent work / travel outside of core hours. What makes it more apparent is that given PA's strong public sector presence, many of the staff are now working along side clients who are paid more, get more leave, better pensions and still do 9-5.As a firm, I firmly believe we need to step into the modern working world and give staff a fair deal - which could start with balancing out the cancelled pay rise with a temporary increase in annual leave to the level routinely offered by competitors who also manage to pay more (so no funny business about "buying" annual leave to get the same level offered as standard on higher salaries elsewhere.)

The other great holiday wheeze in PA is that you are offered a half day at Easter and on Christmas eve, but only as long as you come into the office or client site for the morning. Working from home and you lose it. Personally, I find that level of trust to be particularly telling. I sat in room B4 in 123 in late 2006 when our practice partner told us all not to fret about our ridiculously low wages in BOP. There was a pay review coming in 2007 / 08 that would address all that. Despite both 2007 and 2008 being red hot years for PA (and BOP in particular) with lots of public sector work being sold, nothing came of that promised pay review.PA are the only top 20 consultancy not to have grown in the boom years up to 2008. No wonder we are slipping down the rankings in terms of size, job quality, and pay rates.

Get out then, I left BOP a while ago and haven't looked back.

I would love to leave anon, but almost no one is hiring now. The only interviews I can get are for other public sector consultancies, but I don’t really want to do more low level process mapping for some little known government body.

Ahh process mapping..ones of the much trumpeted joys of consulting. Face it pal, it adds no value, is thoroughly boring and is unlikely to give you much exit options also.I struggle to see the value of joining a consultancy as a fresh grad..then go and do glorified admin work for a partner, then one can go into industry and get real experience on how real businesses work, the challenges they face and where growth and profits are going to be coming frommy opinion only, but I'm sure an ACN process mapping demigogue would argue otherwiseZB

It could be worse. It could be a lot better. Ho hum

To Another BOPerMaybe look outside of consulting, there are jobs equally if not more interesting working for blue chip companies

THanks for the suggestion anon, but since I joined BOP about 3 years ago I've done almost no private sector jobs so I might just have to ride out this storm

'I sat in room B4 in 123 in late 2006....moan moan moan'Oh dear. I remember that time very well, largely because I got a fat pay rise. Ever get the feeling they might be trying to tell you something......?