Hi, I wonder why you are reading this? Are you looking to BT as a possible employer, are you working for BT and want to see my opinions or are you a Customer? I have worked for BT for many years, in different roles and had better not say anything damaging!! Just to be clear, this is my opinion!! Overall I would say BT is a good employer compared with the rest however it is BIG and if you are very individualistic, parts of BT may not suit you. Lets just say that 'Dilbert' was alledgedly inspired by the creator's experiences at a (US) TelCo!!
BT is (again) a BIG organisation, employing I imagine 200,000 people directly or indirectly across the globe. It has continual re-organisations and even if you've been here 20 years it can be difficult to find your way around. People's job descriptions can be misleading, you can make your own up and put it on the internal directory. This is compensated for by the fact that BT people are usually friendly and helpful.
Lets look at BT's business. It is no longer a UK phone company. It gets a decreasing amount of revenue from legacy phone traffic. In fact it has started to cautiously canabalise this by offering VOIP to Consumers. BT is increasingly very big in corporate communication networks, ie providing the network infrastructure, software, data centres, applications and support. BT is in the process of an industry-leading conversion of the whole public network to IP. Of course BT is a leading provider of Broadband in the UK and is augmenting this with value-add products such as video on demand, domestic networking, security tools. Ultimately some of BT's competitors will build their own Broadband networks so BT always has to stay ahead of the game. Its not laways clear that it will, but media reports on BT are currenly very encouraging and Ben Verweyan, the CEO, is respected inside and outisde the Industry.
BT is split into several Business Units, this is partly a regulatory requirement (eg to stop the network people favouring BT's own retail people) and partly a functional reason eg to specifically serve business or consumer customers. In theory all the business units should co-operate but it is inevitable as with any organisation that there are rivalries and this can touch your job.
BT is generally perceived by Customers as trustworthy. I think this is true, if anything goes wrong, BT will often throw resources at it to put the situation right. I have never known BT to try and rip Customers off. However, because BT is so big, it can be frustrationg getting someone to deal with problems and Customers can get shunted around, the Company is well aware of this and is continually trying to solve this. Modernisation of the network and the ability of Customers to 'self-serve' is hoped to resolve this.
BT has a lot of foot soldiers, many of whom have no aspirations to go further in their career. This includes the armies of engineers, office-based support people and call centres. These people are usually very professional in their jobs but sometimes feel second-class citizens and managing them needs their respect . Those on BT Contracts are well paid and Unionised, many however are employed via an Agency and pay rates are lower. A few are offshore but BT has not gone in for wholesale BPO (outsourcing), well yet. BT makes genuine efforts to re-skill people if their job ceases.
There are opportunities to progress into Professional / Management jobs but there is quite a lot of external recruitment when specialist skills are needed. It is fair to say the financial rewards for promotion are not always much of an inducement, at least initially. You have to see it as a move that will benefit your career long-term. A lot of people are effectively self-managed, with their Line Manager given projects, business improvement activities.
The Company employes a lot of professionals, in areas such as Sales, Technology, Marketing, Legal, HR - you name it. They are generally well paid, there is a raft of perks such as cars, share incentives, good holidays, in fact what you would expect of a blue chip company. These are the jobs that people aspire to. They seem rosy as they seem cut off from day-to-day reality however they have pressures of their own. People find they have to work in excess of contracted hours, you don't have to, but it helps your career. There are a lot of talented people in these areas, and you need to keep up with the cutting edge in the chosen profession.
There is a Company Pesion Scheme but the old final salary one closed to new staff ages ago. The Unions I would say have influence in BT rather than power, industrial relations have been good for many years.
BT offers training to all, often web-based, and everyone has an annual performance assessment and development plan. Support for professional qulaifications is available but needs to be very rigorously justified.
Senior Management make efforts to be open to the troops. You can email the CEO and you will get a reply.
There are programmes to promote women and people from diverse ethnic and lifestyle backgrounds.
BT tends to be London-centric, athough it has major operations across the UK and worldwide. If you can relocate to the South-East of England it has usually does your career no harm.
BT is, as you would expect, technically advanced. There is a lot of jargon, abbreviations, even sometimes delight in technical complexity. For a long time, email, voicemail, instant messaging, netmeetings, conference calls, are the principal ways of communicating. If you are an expert in a relevent Telecomms technology you will feel instantly at home. If you are not, you need at least a basic grasp or you will fail to communicate with people.
The sales professional are generally very driven and often recruited from outside. They can be paid very well indeed. People say that BT is full of silly rules and resistant to change. There are a lot of rules and since these days everything is web based, it can be difficult to find things out. However BT people are generally very friendly and helpful and anyone new to the company will find support. BT is fairly risk-adverse, in my opinion, and people do question why change is needed. If you are very individualistic I think you could find this a challenge, although less so in areas like marketing or business improvement.
Most of this all sounds quite rosy, so what is the downside? BT has been on a relentless cost-cutting crusade ever since it got into serious debt in the dot com boom. Therefore costs are strictly controlled and things like company paid social events are rare. If you need to buy paperclips you need to do this through a procurement process. Your mobile phone bill (if you have one) will be scrutinised. Noone can argue this is business sense, but if you've worked in a freerolling 'creative' environment this might be quite a culture shock.
Simillarly Sales people will find that they need to be ethical (shock!!) and may have to go through a risk assessment process for larger deals. Good for the Customer but frustrationg if you want to make a quick sale.
I know a lot of people who feel they need to be seen to conform, fit in, even keep their head down. Senior managers area aware of this and employees are encouraged to 'speak up' but if they do, it is often anonymous. Again, if you are a bit of a maverick, there are parts of BT you might feel uncomfortable in.
I hope you have found this interesting, I would appreciate comments from other people in BT. Everyone has their own experiences, I have had some bad ones but have tried to be balanced.
If you are interested in jobs in BT, look here http://www.btplc.com/Careercentre/
Just remember Dilbert!!!
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