Vantaggi
Nium is an interesting business. Having grown from its remittance entity (Instarem), Nium was created to focus on B2B payments, by using the platform already built for remittances. There is absolutely a growing market here, but as the cons will tell you, perhaps Nium is unlikely to capitalise on it. Additionally, the majority of people at either VP or below are intelligent, and thoughtful people, doing good work in spite of the senior leadership's attempts to derail progress.
Svantaggi
What's very strange when you first join is the lack of information about the organisation's history (in terms of internal growth, how their people structure has developed, and what solutions have been put in place after previous failings). During my time here we have already seen two Chief Product Officers who have been and gone, the second Chief Tech officer currently in place , a Chief Compliance officer who has been with the company for 4 years leaving in the last quarter of 2023. We have also seen the Chief Revenue Officer leave in Jan 2023, and strong performing VPs from Compliance, Technology, HR stay for less than a year and then leave. The current CTO is an absolute disaster and has destroyed whatever culture had previously been set in terms of fostering a team of strong performers. Now of course, with a growing technology company (in effect Nium is still a start up) you expect a lot of change, and you would normally praise the founder for acting fast and spotting trends proactively. This is not the case. Having been at the org for over 3 years, it's now easier to pull the thread on the founder's ability to manage a high growth organisation. Every decision is a reaction to mismanagement, and every action taken by the founder is a essentially a mix of firing and hiring. The founder is a salesman, not a leader, and it shows in his inability to positively influence anything. Another strange aspect was that once accepting the job, and Nium's compensation and benefits offer, it became clear over the first year that the benefits spoken about either didn't exist or were so poor they actually were not worth having. Now, HR will respond to this aspect (and fairly) that some improvements have been made. For instance, maternity leave now matches (in some countries) the benefit that Nium sells during its hiring process, and the health insurance now does provide more cover. However, every month or so, (when you get time to dig into the reality of the benefits) it becomes quickly apparent that they aren't worth the paper they are written on. An example of this was a big issue in 2022 where the bonus structure was clearly explained that most staff bonuses will be a mixture of individual performance and company performance (based on Nium meeting a revenue figure for the year, as well as employee grading). This was set out really clearly in Q1 of 2022, but when the bonuses were actually revealed towards the end of the year, it become clear that the company performance element was not honoured across the business, and that the leadership had decided which specific departments were worthy of the bonus vs others. This is an example of Nium's management in a nutshell. The founder can (and does) sell any story to employees and he could have takne the route of being transparent , holding his hands up and saying "I know we said that everyone would benefit if the company revenue target was met, but based on the longevity of the company, we have taken certain decisions to distribute the bonus differently". Instead what happened was the leadership delegated the handling of the staff reaction and furore to HR, with the SVP of HR having to set up calls in each region to effectively explain how a departmental performance was always a factor in bonuses, and that it is the staff who got this interepretation wrong. We were effectively gaslit. When further questions were asked as to how or where this 'misunderstanding' was communicated previously (either in any town halls, or slides, or comms) the SVP of HR deflected the question and said she would come back to us on an answer once they escalated the question to the founder (which never ultimately happened). You had the feeling that the most SVPs and VPs had clearly been told by senior leadership that this decision is happening whether staff like it or not and to deal with the ramifications themselves. Again, you could say "well a mishandled bonus situation doesn't or shouldn't colour the management of whole company", which could be true except that this type of blind decision making, coupled with a blatant lack of transparency or care, is a regular theme at Nium. Take the latest set of staff cuts in Oct 2023. Just 6 months earlier, the founder assured everyone that the investment already at Nium should give the company a runway of 3 years (without the need for any further investments), and that everyones jobs are safe. The founder, in Q1 2023, employed his favourite management tool of signing off on a a manic hiring spree, employing sales staff on large comp packages, in the US, UK, EU. Why did he have to do this? The previous sales team/staff were struggling to sell a product that has huge issues in both quality, centralisation, and use cases, and therefore many of them left or were let go. Back to the eventual staff cuts in 2023, now that the hiring spree was over, and senior sales/BD staff were joining in the summer of 2023, it should have been no surprise that A) payroll costs were going to balloon, and B) revenues will probably drop as there was a gap between sales staff leaving, or new ones either not quite joining yet or those who have joined in Q2 would need time to understand a dysfunctional product. So towards the end of Q3 2023, the leadership team have panicked, and the CEO reaches his favourite tool yet again, making 10% of the workforce redundant. What's baffling again is that, not just that the "fire/hire" cycle continues, but that this time a lot of strong performers were included in the cut, and the explanation from management is that a 'restructure is needed'. So it continues, the cycle of strong performers joining, questioning the management, and then being forced to leave, with the poor performers or 'yes men' remaining. Post redundancies, the first message from the founder in the company town hall was that 'staff should get over it and move forward'. The problem with this is, the founder has cut so many crucial roles, staff were desperate to hear what's the plan for those left behind in making sure those critical responsibilities were picked up. No plan was discussed or mentioned, and again it is the VPs who are left to pick up the pieces. Other examples of poor leadership behaviour include: • Certain leaders avoided replying to any tough decisions or contentious actions over emails, instead communicating over phone to get across their message, conveniently ensuring there is no paper trail of their input. • Bullying and misogynistic behaviour towards female staff. In particular, there are regular stories that female staff are treated differently (and more harshly) than male staff. • 'Light' racism/xenophobia by leaders (on one occasion, when a senior leader was told some staff attendance may be affected by Ramadan, said leader simply responded with "Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong"). • Managers and Directors are regularly thrown under the bus by senior leadership (the SVP of HR, in particular, has a regular habit of doing this). What has happened, during my tenure here, is that the founder regularly loses the trust of his newly hired staff, and has to start again in building a new management team (and culture) only to then restart the cycle of firing/hiring again because the same behaviours are repeated.
