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Thank you for your openness to share your thoughts. We’re sorry you feel that you aren’t being heard in the organisation.
You are quite right to point out there was inappropriate behaviour in the past, which was acknowledged and addressed just over 12 months ago. Since then, a lot of work has gone into making sure there are mechanisms and accountability at all levels so it doesn’t happen again.
More generally, we’ve also worked very hard on creating a culture of feedback so that everyone feels safe to speak up, and if they don’t there are anonymous channels too. If you have any concerns, issues, or questions, all we ask is that you please raise them through the channel you feel most comfortable with. We can only fix what we know is broken.
When it comes to setting salary, we are sorry that, for you, it feels like a popularity contest. Clearly, we've not done a good enough job of explaining how it's done. We'll be clearer next time. Here's the process we follow - we review salaries on a six-monthly basis (to avoid recency bias). Feedback against our competency framework and our values is collected from colleagues who have worked closely together, including development managers. That's then reviewed by development managers (of all grades) and team leads in an open forum to gain a diverse view and avoid bias. The recommended salary changes are then examined in the whole business context to make sure there's consistency. Raises are based on demonstrating our values and doing a great job; this does mean though, salary increases vary and not everyone automatically gets a raise.
The system seems to work well, our eNPS is 40% above the industry benchmark, our OfficeVibe engagement score is up from 7.1 to 8.1 out of 10 during the year to June 2021. The top performers in our consulting team have been women, and like everyone their salary increases reflect their achievements.
We do disagree with your view of the strategy. We are pursuing a strategy that means we are building a consulting team and tech platform simultaneously. We are not building tech for tech's sake; we build that tech on lessons we learn from our consulting work to make the world a better place through better use of data. Each strategy has trade-offs, and ours is no different.
We want to deliver on our purpose, and build an excellent business for the long term, so we're bootstrapping or self-funding. If you have questions about this please do ask at the monthly OKR sessions or in the anonymous channels. The more 'on the same page' we all are, the faster we'll move forward.
The quality of our work is critical; if you joined after August 2020, you would have had a week's formal training, numerous hours of on the job training with your colleagues and monthly development manager check-ins. If that hasn't happened, please, please, please let us know (in a way that protects your anonymity if necessary).
I know that's quite a lengthy response, but you raise important points that need correctly addressing. And it's not OK that you don't feel able to voice your concerns and have a straightforward open conversation about them internally. We’ve done a huge amount of work on this, and there’s always more to do, but if you don’t speak up, there’s little we can do to understand and address the points you’ve raised here.
