Good potential but dreadful company management
Pluspunten
- Hands-on experience from the very beginning, you learn fast and you get to communicate with clients that have been many years in the sector from day one. The job done in regulatory will open many doors, though as it will be explained in the cons, this will be mainly for the outside job market rather than the internal career ladder. - Great chemistry and comradeship between colleagues, young and dynamic work environment - the work can be legitimately fun depending on your interests - managers are mostly helpful and friendly, they support their teams but have little control over them and their fate
Minpunten
- Employees' well-being and retention: firstly, it’s a family business, meaning the family always comes before the employees. The board has no respect for their employees and lacks any type of vision or business plan. As a result, managers are not really managing, they are merely coordinating their own teams and have a very low impact on macro decisions. In the end, everyone is replaceable, so once you reach a certain seniority, you are either forced to leave or end up being fired, and end up being replaced by a wave of interns. This cycle seems to be repeating every 1-2 years and HR is incapable of addressing this vicious circle or, for that matter, any employee question, comment or remark: whenever questions are raised to HR or payroll regarding benefits and career, these are never addressed personally but collectively in so-called “window meetings” with the whole company present, creating a lot of frustration from the employee’s side. Between June and October, to address the receding financial situation, a series of layoffs of both junior and senior personnel occurred, in some cases these were carried out via a simple email by the board. Laid-off employees are expected to work through their entire notice period (which can be several months for seniors) as the board wants them to resign earlier in the hope of saving some money. As a result, some employees spontaneously resigned to avoid the same treatment. - Micromanaging: important but also routine decisions are ultimately taken by the COO, who mostly lacks understanding of daily business and services. They will nevertheless tell everyone what to do (always indirectly via a manager) and will not listen to alternative ideas or proposals. Sometimes they jump in a conversation with a client without any background information on the project, creating confusion and frustration from both the consultant’s and the client’s side. Both managers and employees as a result do not develop a sense of accountability, as they do not feel trusted or empowered by the board. - Lack of work division and expertise: Interns and experts do the same job, only experts are paid more to work less, creating imbalance within the team. Expertise and knowledge are generally not valued by the board. As a result, in your daily tasks, you have to count a lot on improvisation and instinct, as the internal expertise is limited and seniors/experts often cannot be reached or are uncooperative. To level up your skills and expertise, you can only leave. - Career opportunities: in theory, you can choose between a technical and a managerial path. In practice, you will have little to no possibility to specialise within a certain niche/market, you will do everything all the time no matter if you are a technician or a manager. Those who are willing to work, just get more work and more tasks, those who don't, are left alone to do the bare minimum but with little to no consequence. The evaluation process is very bureaucratic, and promotions tend to be department-based and do not take into consideration individual performance. As a result, high performers are not rewarded - Salary/benefits: the work is not fairly remunerated as salaries do not reflect the job market, so everybody gets the same regardless of the department they work in. The commission scheme is particularly imbalanced towards sales/customer relations, which does a fraction of the job, while those who carry out the actual service are not as valued. Within RA, only so-called "VIP clients" allow you to get commissions, but these are randomly divided so a higher remuneration solely depends on luck rather than skills. As mentioned before, it is impossible to negotiate benefits or remuneration, because HR doesn't or cannot reply, managers cannot manage, and the board does not care if you leave. Moreover, there is in place a very strict telework-from-abroad policy according to which you can only telework for a limited number of days consecutively depending on grade - no exceptions are possible or can only be granted by CEO or COO instead of the direct manager. Payroll team in charge of the policy often makes everyone frustrated but is unable to enforce the policy, so employees are left to find ways around the madly strict rules, and when someone is caught or is suspected to be going against the rules, everybody is punished by further restricting the rules instead of taking action and punish the wrong-doers only.
