Vantaggi
Flexible working - although forced.
Svantaggi
Where do I begin? I was part of the much publicised ‘biggest acquisition’ of CP history, which was sold to all of the Haines Watts staff as an acquisition by a company that held similar values to that of our own. How wrong this was! From day 1 this company hid their true intentions, starting with a Q&A forum for all the staff being TUPE’d over. We were told there would be details available on our career paths or ‘flight plans’ as they call them but not once was one of these made available in the period leading up to the end of year review. What they don’t tell you about these ‘flight plans’ is that they will review you against them and their CP values. When you haven’t seen your own ‘flight path’, you aren’t able to perform or even attempt to be on target, which does make me think this was evidently on purpose. Come year end, all the managers of each department get into their huddle to review each individual working under them. These huddles ARE NOT productive and I would personally go as far as to say they are a chance for managers (and above), to pick people they don’t like the look of, to put on a performance improvement plan and give no recognition to. Coming into CP it was told that we would have a period of settling in as this was near the end of the self-assessment hard deadline, so the HW staff were told to continue as they were until the new year. This left teams being completely segregated for the first few months. Come February, this looked to be improving across the audit and BS&O teams however, all other areas continued to be completely segregated (and currently still are at the time of writing this). This was so bad, that even clients were beginning to suffer from the number of staff exiting the business. When these clients were forwarded to members of CP, they would be passed around through departments, to become someone else’s problem. Following on from this, clients who had been used to the reliability of HW were then charged the price for becoming a client of CP (crazy increases) and lost that reliability to only be able to contact a call center (Moneypenny) with promises of a call back, which again would be bounced around because no one wanted to take ownership of these clients, especially when their fee was not ‘worth it’. The benefits are very wow when you first look but are all caveated. Unlimited holiday, which is only if your team aren’t busy. If your team is very few people, you find your annual leave is limited. When you come to leave CP however, you are only entitled to the statutory amount of annual leave. Flexible working - if you are happy to not go into the office and WFH this may suit, but when your option is only 1 day a week in the office, you find that WFH isn’t as glamorous as they make out. Even more so when the team are based in Derby and you are expected to visit them to collaborate not the other way around. Half day Friday and ‘summer hours’ are selective to departments that have no work on or are particularly quiet. Training - now if you want to study at CP their attitude is for you to do it on your own pretty much. No guidance or support, just a day a week allowed for you to do your off the job training so you tick the box for them to continue claiming the funding. When asking for work to help you with areas you are studying, they tell you yes they will get you on the next project but it soon amounts to thin air when that time comes. If you think you will get exposure to other areas within the business, think again. CP will keep you in the department you are hired to and you may want to experience another unrelated area but this will not be approved or allowed. It’s very much if your face fits kind of place, they give unrealistic targets to people for the year disguised as a motivator but it’s really so they can use any failing against you in the EOY review. If you look at the number of people that have left CP since November you will be shocked. HW was a community of respectable accountants, CP aren’t interested in any of that it’s just the price tag that comes along with it. They boast that they are consistently hiring but you will find the same jobs on their careers page just renewed because it’s impossible to fill or people join and leave because of the extreme stress they are put under. Last but not least, they are actively ageist. With colleagues that have left they have been marked as a No Rehire due to their age (most being 40+) which has been highlighted to HR but I doubt this part of the system will be rectified so that staff cannot see it when they put in their notice and have their exit interview.
