Vantaggi
Local team below partner level, are all absolutely lovely! Everyone gets on really well and works well together as a team. Everyone has always very much had a can do attitude and are willing to work hard and pull together to ride out difficult situations.
Svantaggi
1 - Constant changes of procedures/processes which are introduced when incomplete and designed by individuals who are not working with those processes on a day by day basis. You are bombarded with countless emails that it's impossible to actually read them all meaning that important information isn't actually reaching those that require communication of such information. 2 - Remuneration packages are poor. Salary levels are low compared to other businesses and lack of pay rises during the cost of living crisis has been a crippling to some employees. Little/no other benefits are offered as part of the general remuneration package. Inconsistencies in remuneration packages throughout the business. Not to mention the introduction of a 3 month notice period for trainees, which is truly shocking. 3 - Lack of/poor leadership from senior management, including within the local office. No communication from senior management about what is going on and being kept completely in the dark. From a managers perspective, it is extremely embarrassing/difficult when decisions are being made and not communicated to management level. This meant implementation of such changes was difficult to manage and questions from staff were difficult to answer as management level didn't know themselves what was going on. When issues/concerns are raised and opinions are offered that do not fall in line with the opinions of senior management you are treated unfairly and gradually pushed out. Over the last few months I have witnessed this personally, I have been excluded from a variety of management level decisions, kept in the dark about important changes and most shockingly outright ignored by senior management within the local office. I have been blanked and completely ignored by partners, not even a hello when I've been present, yet others have been addressed. This has even been noticed nd commented on by other staff members. I would go so far as to call this a form of bullying. I have been made to feel completely isolated during the last couple of months, making the decision to work from home on a more regular basis to remove myself from an extremely toxic environment. My mental health has been significantly impacted, I have suffered with panic attacks and anxiety on the days I have had to be present in the office and felt extremely uncomfortable in the presence of senior management, I certainly haven't been made to feel I could approach them. Certain offices are also favoured, e.g. care packages were provided to some offices and not others! 4 - Capacity levels/work is unmanageable. When managing workloads/capacity this is determined by looking at numbers on a piece of paper and whilst on paper the staffing levels may work, in reality this is not the case. In an ideal world, work would come in on a regular and spaced out basis but in practice this does not happen and when those busy periods hit we do not have the staffing levels to cope with the work demands. This is having a significant impact on both staff morale but also levels of service being provided to clients. Higher level staff are leaving and not being replaced, because there is "no budget to replace them" and if we are lucky they are being replaced by junior members and whilst it is great to move people on and offer them career progression they do not have the technical experience required for such roles. Existing staff are just expected to absorb the man hours lost on the losing of unreplaced staff, which in the long run is unachieveble and extremely detrimental. Clients of azets are charged fairly high level fees and in turn should be provided with high levels of service but this is near impossible to provide such a level of service due to work loads. It is very demoralising to spend a large amount of time dealing with client complaints as a result of work turnaround time, mistakes, and general mismanagement by centralised azet procedures, not a good use of management time. 5 - Staff and likewise low fee clients are not valued, and what azets seems to have forgotten is that a business needs both staff and clients to be successful. The way our local office is currently functioning is not sustainable. There is a crisis and staff wellbeing is taking a massive hit, when staff members are seen to be crying every day, there is a serious issue! 6 - There is too much emphasis on chargeability/recoverability, rather than looking at the bigger picture and establishing the root of the issues, e.g. no pay rises yet continual increasing of charge out rates, too much non chargeable work being required e.g. dealing with client complaints, implementation of yet more new procedures, etc etc. 7 - Mental health/wellbeing is not prioritised as it should be. The introduction of a few webinars, which are to be be watched on your lunch break, a break which should be taken to provide the rest an employee both needs and is entitled to seems contradictory. 8 - Extremely low staff morale within the local office, which has been communicated through my voice surveys but as always not even acknowledged, let along addressed. The surveys are a good way for staff to voice their opinions but unfortunately, I have never seen any changes come from staff opinions, so the processes and time invested in completing such surveys do not serve their purpose. 9 - No career progression. From my experience, this has been no fault of my line manager but instead a result of capacity issues.
