Cengage Reviews

3.0

35% would recommend to a friend

(2,396 total reviews)
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Michael Hansen

43% approve of CEO

27% positive business outlook

Cengage has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 2,396 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Cengage employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
28 Sept 2016

Gloomy and jaded

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Ok work/life balance Some great people

Cons

Morale is low General apathy No dialogue Some employees are clearly favourites High turnover of staff

2.0
24 July 2024

A joke of a company

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Most of the people in the trenches are genuinely lovely and want to help each other. There is a lot of flexibility with working from home.

Cons

This is a great place to work if you want to become poorer over time. You will never get a pay raise in line with inflation. Salary transparency is non-existent. Content developers with similar levels of experience are paid wildly different salaries for no apparent reason. The company cries poor when it comes to salary negotiations for individual contributors, but has bottomless budgets to promote inexperienced charlatans into director roles and hire the MD's mates as consultants. Some divisions have to work on shoe-string budgets with minimal staff, while other divisions have masses of inefficient, infighting staff that treat budgets like monopoly money. Your job will never be safe. Redundancies are endless and don't appear to be very strategic. Recently the company has gutted and offshored the permissions, finance and HR teams, which means it's only a matter of time before they are sued for one thing or another. They have offshored a tonne of production and editorial work to India, and this has resulted in delays, budget blow-outs, and a marked reduction in quality. In some cases offshore staff have jeopardised relationships with some of our most profitable authors. The business is well-aware of bullies in their management ranks and does nothing about it. Any individual contributor that brings up a genuine complaint is written off as crazy and mentally unstable. Content development has never been overseen by someone that actually knows what it is, which means this work is not valued. There are some people in the business that view content developers as glorified assistants and scapegoats instead of highly educated people that try our hardest to create high quality products that serve our customers.

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Cengage Response
1y
I appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. I am happy to hear that you enjoy your co-workers and our benefits. As an organization we have worked hard to ensure our total rewards are competitive with the market and that staff are fairly compensated for the work they are responsible for. Our HR teams closely monitor the market to ensure our compensation is competitive. It’s true, we’ve recently been through a significant transformation, and – as part of our culture of continuous improvement -- we will continue to look for ways to increase profitability and simplicity. Although we have had to make difficult decisions about teams, including offshoring specific roles, I believe that this evolution in the way we work will eliminate many of the complexities and challenges our business faces and strengthen our business overall. At Cengage Group, we work hard to foster a safe and inclusive work environment and we take bullying claims seriously. I encourage you to submit a report through the Speak Up Line, so that we can learn more details and take the appropriate next steps. If you have any further feedback or suggestions on how we can improve, please feel free to reach out. Best, Morgan Wolbe, Executive Vice President, Global Operations and Chief Transformation Officer
1.0
14 Nov 2021

A dumpster-fire.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I have nothing positive to say.

Cons

- Extreme resistance to working from home, despite most of employees still doing it 2 years on. - Promotions don't exist. - Pay increases don't exist. - Constant carrot-dangling for better opportunities, but nothing is ever delivered or guaranteed in writing. Saying yes means more work with no reward. - At least 30 people have resigned this year alone. Retention-rate is abysmal.

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Cengage Response
4y
Thank you for taking the time to leave this review. As a company, Cengage Group will remain virtual-first except for operationally essential employees, and I encourage you to speak with your manager and HR business partner to discuss the best solution for yourself and your team. Regarding career advancement, employee growth and development is a priority for Cengage Group – we’ve expanded our programs over the past year and continue to invest in this area. We recognize that we are not perfect, but we value our employees and are continuing to advance our internal mobility efforts – year-to-date, we have had over 10% of our workforce receive an in-line promotion and have also had 200+ employees find additional lateral and upward advancement via openly posted roles. While the education industry is one of constant change, our voluntary turnover rate over the past five years has consistently remained in line or below that of the wider industry. Best, Michael Hansen, CEO
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Glassdoor has 2,592 Cengage reviews submitted anonymously by Cengage employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Cengage is right for you.