Charles Schwab Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Ethical financial guidance;
Reasonable/affordable product pricing;
Transparency of fees;
Great brand name;
Work/life balance;
Supportive and collaborative work environment;
Diverse employee base;
Embracement of new technologies;
Good benefits;
Time to volunteer of 8 hours per year;

Cons – Few career advancement opportunities or options except growing own practice;
Employee base is diverse, but management is not;
Overly cumbersome paperwork and procedures, especially on advice products;
Frequent changes in executive level leadership result in inconsistent policies;
Opinions of top producers count, but not the others;
Favoritism hurts morale;
Quarterly resets burn out even the best calibers;
Termination after 2-4 quarters of bottom 20% sales: Financial Consultants are treated like disposables within the company while trying to convince clients they are experienced and trusted advisors and will be there for clients for a long time;

Advice to Senior Management – If you would like clients to believe they are dealing with a trusted advisory service provider firm, you need to respect and empower your front-line Financial Consultants, especially those with 10+ years of experiences, and allow for bottom-up feedback and participation instead of only top-down dumping of compensation/advice/product policy changes, campaigns and quotas.