Not as nice a company as they'd have you believe - Recensione dipendente - Digital Marketing Specialist presso Torchbox

Where to start? There's another review on here regarding the Marketing team that I completely concur with (I almost wondered if I'd written it!). From the way the company talk about themselves, you'd imagine you'd be working in a friendly, open and supportive culture. However, the exact opposite is true within the Marketing team. I've had a few years to cool off and I'm still aggrieved by how I was treated throughout my time there. I was a complete novice to digital marketing when I joined and, within about 2 months, was running my own accounts and billing hours for them. Good work was not recognised and the inevitable mistakes that a novice would make were dealt with harshly (I was threatened with gross misconduct for being late with a client report - no performance management or constructive support with that). Most startling was the complete lack of awareness or sensitivity to managing people as the other review mentioned. I can say first hand, it's even worse for those who are managing mental health challenges. I told my line manager I was experiencing some difficulties (perhaps understandable given the culture I'd walked into) and their response was to inform HR without my consent who then grilled me for an hour about the nature of it. The outcome was something along the lines of 'keep talking to us'. In order for that to happen, you have to have trust and they'd done nothing to suggest I could trust them. And no reasonable adjustments or concrete actions were agreed as an outcome. The pressure to keep billing hours high continued and the volume of work and accounts steadily increased. More widely, there was a strange cliquey culture throughout the company. I've listed free lunches on Wednesday as a pro but it was also intensely socially awkward at times as we did that as a whole company who had very little connection to the marketing team. I often felt excluded from conversations both inside and outside of my team and there was a marked contrast in the togetherness of some teams versus how my team operated. Also, don't believe the hype about skiing trips - those stopped some years ago when I joined but they still say they do it. Perhaps they've resumed? My salary was very poor but I've noticed they've now put salary ranges on their jobs page and look far better now.