Working 9-5

Week one into the new job and I have so much to report! Let me start off by sharing that I am now working for Ernst & Young. I know, I know, I had reported late last year that I would be joining Towers Perrin. Long story short- circumstances changed and on Monday, 7 January I started at Ernst & Young as a Learning and Development Officer in the Financial Services HR group.

As JP has asked on more than one occasion- "What is it that you do?" Basically I am part of a small group of HR professionals who design and implement internal training programs for the professionals in the Financial Services practice. The programs we work on include fast track programs to management, soft skills building for people (like building client relationships, enhancing influence and selling skills, etc.), Partner Track training, etc. It is something that I've been interested in for a long time and I am excited to do something non-recruiting related for the first time in the 7 1/2 years I've been out of school.

All week long I was in trainings and orientations and I took copious notes and poured over org charts to understand the business. Through the week I also kept a side list- observations and comparisions to my old world in the US. For your pleasure viewing, here are some initial thoughts:

• Fire exits. Every training I go to that is the first thing the presenter points out- what the fire exit plan is and where the exits are. Not where the restrooms (toilets) are, or where you can get tea and coffee... just the fire exits. As a seasoned presenter, it is something I had never given much thought to in the past.
• Open plan office- a lot of companies here in the UK have what is called "Open Office" plans. Everyone sits at desks with small partitions- even the Partners. There are no offices. There are meeting rooms and small huddle rooms to make personal calls and host meetings. Coming from having my own office to this is going to take a lot of getting used to. How does one get their important internet surfing done in an open plan office environment?
• The London office has 6,000 employees in it. It is huge. The office has a cafeteria, ATM's, a coffee shop, and even a place to pick up train tickets ordered in advance. I'm sure there is more, but that is all I've seen to date. My old office had maybe 350 people, all of whom I knew at least by face. In the old days I could walk up to the IT guys to ask a computer question, or go to the facilities people and ask for a favor. Now, I'm forced to learn a process to request this and go through the normal channels... ugh.
• So, there is so much US bashing here! JP had alluded to some before but never went into much detail. They love to point out how they are superior to the US here! Case in point: during the corporate orientation here- the presenter gave all the high level facts of the firm- it is a huge organization overall. The UK firm has 10,000 people and last year brought in about 2 Billion USD in revenues. The US firm has about 35,000 people and last year had over 18 Billion USD in revenues. The presenter (a Brit) told the audience of new joiners " Some people think this is a US firm. These numbers clearly represent the strength of the UK firm and show that we are actually bigger here." I'm not a mathmetician, but I think he was wrong. On more than one occasion this week people have gone out of their way to point out what about the US firm is wrong, bad, etc. In orientation even! I could never imagine disparaging any nationality in my old days- where I did a fair amount of orientations and trainings. It is probably because I am American, and I did work for the US firm, so why draw direct comparisions when we all worked for the US firm? Who knows, but there is a rather large chip on some people's shoulders that can make anybody not from here feel a little out of place.
• There are Partners in the UK firm named Steve Martin, James Dean, and Matt Broderick. Cool huh!
• The hygiene habits of the Brits leave much to be desired. People openly blow their noses at the table here- and it completely disgusts me. They carry hankies and tissues and just let loose. What happened to stiff upper lip, prim and proper behavior? Also, people stash their said hankies and (used) tissued up their sleeves. Seriously? In a meeting recently, one of the Partners pulled out his hanky, blew his nose rather loudly, and then stuffed the hanky up his shirt sleeve. It made me a little queasy to my tummy.

These initial thoughts are a little negative, so I want to put it out there that I'm very happy with the new team. The people in the group I joined are very pleasant and nice. They all seem very interested in getting to know me and ask lots of questions and crack jokes all day. I was apprehensive that being an outsider and from the US I'd have a hard time with that, but that is all going extremely well.

After week one I don't have a real hankering to go back to my lady of leisure days- although I do miss sleeping in until 10am. I am back to living for the weekends again, but that is ok, now I have money so spend on the weekends!

This weekend was more of the same- but as a group we are trying to get out beyond our neighborhoods and explore other areas of the city. On Friday night we stayed local, but last night a big group of us went to a Mexican restaurant in SoHo. The food was ok, nothing to get excited about. The dinner was followed by a pub crawl through the sprinkles to a few pubs in the area we were in. It was plenty fun and we even caught the last tube home- leaving no room for error on the erroneous night bus.

In the coming week JP disappears into busy season hours on his new client, and I am left to figure things out and cook for one. The joys of being married to an accountant!

Until next time, cheers, and have a great week!