Profit over worker wellbeing - werkgeversreview Fire, Health and Safety Consultant bij Ark Workplace Risk

I would strongly caution anyone considering joining this company. Based on my experience, the company has a serious leadership and culture problem. The management style I observed was authoritarian, aggressive, and often dismissive of employees. Rather than building people up, encouraging professional growth, or creating a constructive working environment, the culture appeared to rely on fear, criticism, and control. The CEO’s leadership style was, in my view, a major concern. I experienced and observed communication that felt intimidating and unprofessional, including situations where people were criticised or embarrassed in front of others. Independent thinking did not seem to be welcomed, and employees appeared reluctant to speak honestly because of how they might be treated. I also found the business leadership itself to be poor. For a company that claims significant experience, I was surprised by what I saw as weak management practice, limited commercial judgement, and a lack of modern people-leadership skills. This was one of the most negative workplace cultures I have encountered in my career. In my opinion, the company needs serious change at leadership level before it can be considered a healthy or professional place to work, the CEO needs to be replaced as well. Prospective employees should ask careful questions about management style, staff turnover, internal culture, and how disagreement is handled before accepting any role here.

Unfortunately, none, I wish I could have at least one

Fully remote with some site time depending on your role. High salary (however there is no consistency at all - you could be severely underpaid relative to others who do the same job or less, also the high salaries are inflated as thats the only way they can attract/keep staff). Work life balance can be good if you are able to push back against unrealistic programming and manage your time effectively.

In my experience, there is a significant disconnect between senior leadership and the technical realities of the work. This often manifests as client-facing teams promising delivery timelines and budgets without consulting the technical staff. Because some of these decision-makers appear to lack a deep understanding of fire or structural requirements, the resulting workloads are frequently unrealistic, leading to rushed outputs. Senior leadership seem more interested in peddling the flowery façade that is sold to the public, and do not understand what’s involved to produce the outputs. Enjoying the ride on the money wave, while surfing on the backs of consultants who are pressured to meet unrealistic goals, and then flapping and blaming consultants when these unrealistic goals are inevitably not met. The internal data management systems area a disorganised mess. Finding client information often requires significant internal "interrogation" of management, who are frequently unresponsive. This lack of clear communication can lead to gaps in reporting, for which the consultants are then unfairly penalized. QUOODA is a mess and time consuming to use with most consultants consistently complaining about it internally and avoiding using it whenever possible. There is a disconnect between all facets of the company leading to loss of information, and multiple cycles of rework which is highly inefficient. And the high staff turnover only adds to this with key knowledge being consistently lost. Furthermore, I have serious concerns regarding the company’s prioritization of profit over quality assurance. The increasing reliance on AI for tasks requiring nuanced professional judgment is, in my opinion, a risk to the high safety standards required by the Building Safety Act. In my view, the quality of consultancy work is currently hit-or-miss. Too often, deliverables consisted of 'recycled' text from prior reports, stitched together with little regard for logic or context. This trend of prioritizing volume over original thought highlights a systemic flaw in the Quality Assurance process that must be addressed. The business approach feels mismanaged, and reactive rather than proactive with the priority seeming being to make short term profits, with a key example being rounds of hiring followed by redundancies shortly after, suggest a clear lack of long-term strategic planning. Recent redundancies were attributed to a downturn in work, which is not surprising as I can imagine clients aren’t satisfied with some of the outputs which are the result of rushed work (because consultants don’t have the time they need) and incoherent regurgitated information with no actual understanding or critical thought. Finally, the internal culture is heavily siloed. The micromanaged nature of the programming leaves little room for collaboration, creating an "every man for himself" environment where senior management feels inaccessible and out of touch with the daily technical challenges. If you are a professional who values basic communication from all colleagues, good moral (particularly with more senior staff), competent colleagues, colleagues who don’t just palm of issues as “not their problem” with no productive suggestions, and most importantly stability - You should avoid working here in my opinion.