An Honest Review - werkgeversreview Anonymous - Former Employee bij Shepper

- There is no company progression and hard work, experience and loyalty aren’t recognised. - Data integrity is questionable and quantity of work is favoured over quality. Whether it be data being tweaked or a task being looked at more leniently in order to meet completion targets, at the end of the day, it’s all one big numbers game to impress clients without any real substance. - The Senior Lead Team (SLT) don’t listen and are then surprised when staff members become frustrated for not being listened to. - Cronyism is rife. Shepper is basically a fan club ranked by your ability to brown-nose the right people. - They expect external staff (QA and Support) to work like employees, but they don’t get the same treatment, respect or benefits as an employee. They’re completely unappreciated and continue to work in a state of demoralisation bearing the weight of pressure from both management and Sheps, with little to no support in return. - Shepper is an echo chamber of the same ideas and opinions and if you challenge the status quo, you’re silenced. They favour spineless yes-men and dislike anyone with a voice. A lot of the people left at Shepper are unhappy with the way things are being run but are too afraid to speak out. - New employees are sold a lemon and when joining the company, they’re met with insufficient onboarding and a lack of guidance. - Shepper are nitpicky with politically correct terminology and branding themselves as a diverse company but only when it suits them. They uphold double standards, penalising staff for using terminology such as “guys” when referring to a group of people, but then they proceed to call everyone “chaps”. - They’re hypocrites who bang on about empowering women on their social media but have run hardworking female employees into the ground, silenced their voices and dismissed their mental health. - Management sits in an ivory castle. They’re incompetent, lack the ability to take accountability and constantly gaslight other staff members. They’re also highly unprofessional and have been known to bring people’s personal lives into the workplace. - The QA team do not receive adequate training or guidance which means jobs are passed/ failed depending on who picks them up. It's a guessing game that leads to inconsistent and subjective evaluations of work. - There are meetings upon meetings which wastes time and achieves nothing. - GDPR training was only rolled out to the QA and Support team in February 2025 despite the team having access to personal data before that. - Templates often contain mistakes due to a lack of knowledge, job understanding, and testing; and there have been incidents where Shepherds have been penalised for following incorrect guidelines and not pointing these mistakes out to the company. Issues with tasks should be ironed out before they’re put live, not after, and Sheps should not bear the responsibility for company errors. - Unrealistic promises are made to clients which often leads to underdelivering. - On 13th January 2025 the Head of Community publicly claimed, and I quote directly, “Hi Sheps - all of our Shepper staff and QA Team are carefully vetted." This is a bold statement considering management has never actually met most of the QA team in person, and in some cases have never even spoken to them. - There is no HR… this speaks for itself. - Staff are often expected to go above and beyond their job role for no extra benefit or recognition. - I witnessed someone have their bonus pulled because the company claimed they couldn’t afford to pay it, yet a couple of months later Shepper were able to afford a luxury Christmas party on the Thames and have managed to employ multiple new staff members since then. - Shepper are hesitant to remove Shepherds that do not conduct work correctly, despite regularly being flagged by QA; and often allow them to continue working for them and acting as representatives for their clients. - The CEO and Marketplace Director are the root cause of all the issues at Shepper. The Marketplace Director is incompetent and would rather make everyone else the scapegoat than point the finger at himself, and the CEO will continue to protect this person, even when doing so eventually brings Shepper to its knees. - Shepper claims its Discord is a “safe space”, but negative opinions of the company are censored by power hungry moderators and they allow bullies who butt kiss the company to thrive. If I were a client watching the server, I would not want these people representing me. It also poses the question, why delete something if you have nothing to hide? - Shepper doesn’t check in with its support staff who are, at times, expected to put up with horrendous behaviour from Shepherds. - Job fees are often kept low and aren’t adjusted in accordance with the addition of extra task requirements or the rising cost of living. - Shepper is like a weird real-life version of the Hunger Games. No one is getting harmed, but the clueless people at the top smile for photo ops on social media, host parties and pocket the highest salaries while the unappreciated people at the bottom with real industry knowledge do the actual work. I could keep going but the list would be endless and what I’ve mentioned only scratches the surface. Honestly, after all the controversy and gaslighting, working here has left me absolutely traumatised and I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with the lot of them anymore.