They like to sell themselves as a work-life balance company but in reality, the client is king. In theory, I am a proponent that the client or customer does come first, however not the exclusion of the employee. Many times, I had to travel on Sundays and come back late Friday with barely a day at home. Travel times across the country every week for a client could be extremely brutal.
In my time there, I had many rewarding experiences but whenever a client became difficult, management always like to point the finger back at you. In all fairness, I agree that often times we do need to look at ourselves to determine if we can do something better or how we interact with our customers to give them optimum results. That being said, it was ALL about the client to the exclusion of ever seeing a situation from the context of the employee's point of view as well. I had one incident early on in my tenure where I made rather large mistake which after analysis was due to a very manual and undefined process. I responded by offering a solution along with the third party provider who agreed with my solution. Instead, the client ignored this solution and it caused greater problems. Much later I was written up (ostensibly) not for the error but that I didn't communicate it to my manager at Paytech quickly enough; I sent her an email and voicemail within the hour it occurred along with my suggestion to the client. In the end, this became very expensive to the client; in turn they wanted a financial concession. I was written up for said concession and warned that any other'violation' of company code could or would result in immediate termination.
Fast forward over two years later, many other happy successful clients since then and stellar reviews, I get a client where I get along with the staff I am working with and help them immensely in the 2 months I'm there; because a manager at that client had 'issues' with me. Supposedly I left my desk messy one day (a couple sealed nonperishable food items and non-confidential paper on the desk), calculation error sent in an email, not to an employee but to her, which I realized myself and corrected 20 minutes later as well as a couple other minor infractions. My manager calls me to tell me the manager has these issues; I correct them immediately and am told the next week that the manager is much happier. A week or two later, I'm told by my manager that I am being replaced by a new consultant because of the said prior issues that were no longer issues. Anyhow, this all seems very strange so I ask my manager if I am being written up or in trouble. She claims, no and that sometimes, some clients aren't a good fit with the consultant. So another week goes by and I am able to re-train the new consultant and then depart. In a meeting, my supervisor reiterates that it wasn't my fault and that sometimes things are a good fit and that the financial concession was minor. So I go home and am 'on the bench' until my next assignment. I go home and do recertification, continuing education waiting to be reassigned which I am told will be soon. I am scheduled then on the second week to talk with my supervisor about my next assignment. Instead, s.he hands me over to the HR Manager who essentially tells me to 'shut up' and not speak. Tells me very quickly that as of that moment I am no longer an employee with Paytech. No warning, no nothing and used to help them not disturb the current assignment and then summarily let go. This a completely egregious way to treat anybody. I was sent a letter with the same 'issues', none of which had any serious bearing to my performance. Bottom line, because I cost them a few dollars, they fired me. No context was established. In both cases, I did my due diligence, responded with reasonable solutions or improvements and at all times was professional.
All of this might easily be discounted as ramblings of a former disgruntled employee but I implore you to look at my words and ask other former employees. I've been in the payroll industry for over 20 years and have worked for a lot of employers. I've never been fired in my life. They claimed I was negligent and lack of performance. Re-read above and see if any reasonable person would agree. I had some really tough clients in between these two incidents. They didn't care. As long as the client didn't say anything to Paytech management and kept writing checks, they didn't care. Often times weeks would go by, without ever having any contact with my PayTech manager. If I had an issue, it was up to me and no one else to figure it out. I was there over 3 years but learned the average consultant quits after a year or so because of burnout or they get no support and are flamed out. I'm mainly sad for a lot of good friends that are still there and are very unhappy. It's even harder for them to look to other opportunities because you are constantly traveling with no work-life home balance.
