Pluspunten
Snacks in the office, good location of the office
Minpunten
I really wouldn’t recommend working at this company. I have worked at a few PR firms where I have felt positive about my job. So, I can confidently say this was my worst working experience. I’m not someone to complain about anything and usually I wouldn’t write a review like this. However, I think this review will be beneficial for anyone contemplating a role here in the near future. I came to the company at quite a senior level, with the promise of progression in my role, with more opportunities given to me compared to my last company. What I got was the opposite; regression. MWW constantly face resourcing issues; so there was several times I was the ‘lowest’ level on accounts with no AE support beneath me. As the structure of teams follows a strict hierarchy, I was expected to pick up all of the typical day-to-day AE work. Instead of leading on campaigns, setting out and reviewing tasks for people below my level and helping out the AEs with certain tasks (which would include now and then offering pitching support) which is what MWW promised me in this role and what is the standard for a senior manager, I was expected to do all of the AE work with no support offered and was also expected to still be a senior manager…. Even though I had no one to manage! Given the teams were often me on my own or one other person above (who didn’t want to know in terms of splitting out the day to day tasks when they weren’t much higher than my own level; or the same position), they expected me to perform miracles; asking me where national opportunities were and to meet all the KPIs on my own. Even though I secured a lot of good coverage for my clients (both national and top tier tech) it still wasn’t enough. When I complained how stressed I was and overwhelmed with the work and no other team members to support me, they did nothing. They told me to speak to account leads who were the ones who didn’t want to get involved in the basic day-to-day work of the account as it was ‘beneath’ their level (when it was also below mine too but someone had to do it!) The AEs across MWW were all massively overworked, stressed and constantly staying late working long hours. From working at other PR companies, I understand roughly how many people should be working on an account per the retainer budget. At MWW, most accounts are teams of 3 (director, manager and AE), even though the work demand, KPIs and even the retainer budget suggest the teams should be a bigger size. I learnt that the US control team sizes - so despite teams being overwhelmed with work, the strict working order means no additional support will be given as the US side of MWW control the budget/employee count. Another issue I found at MWW is that senior staff have their favourites. So, if you’re quiet and just like to have your head down and get on with your work and do a good job, that won’t be good enough here. You have to suck up to senior management if you want to progress. I am someone who is nice and polite to everyone, wants to do well for my team and my clients and doesn’t want to cause any trouble. However, I found that despite my nice\quiet demeanour, there was a lot of two-faced talking going on behind my back. Rather than have a word with someone if they would like you to do something better/a different way, people talk behind each other’s back and I heard staff make rather nasty remarks about each other. There were also a few incidents where certain senior staff members were very passive aggressive to junior staff, where hurtful things were said. There are of course a lot of nice people at the company. However, given the small size, I think this creates a lot of opportunities for cliques to form and some of the above behaviour to happen. A lot of the staff have worked at the company for years so it was difficult to integrate into this. There are several nice perks to the job - lots of holiday, free lunch at times, early finish Friday. There were also additional days off for mental health. However, these perks really didn’t make up for the stress and upset I felt working in this role. While they offer days off work for mental health; when I spoke up and told my line manager about how I felt and how unhappy I was, not much was done. MWW need to act on their mental health benefits and really start looking after their staff. All employees should be treated equally and with respect.