Pros
-Colleagues below Director-level are competent, knowledgeable, passionate, friendly and supportive- a lovely bunch of people. -A real sense of community (although brought about for the wrong reasons) -Students for the most part seem unaware of issues so do seem to have a nice time
Cons
Writing this is going to be cathartic: -BIMM's reputation in the sector precedes itself: 'stack 'em high, sell 'em low'. -Executive Management all work remotely so therefore live in a complete vacuum, seemingly spitting out ideas and streams of consciousness to those below them that everyone else then has to try and turn into a process or policy (unless they don't actually tell the people who need to know, which is commonplace). They then don't tell each other what they are working on so mixed messages/requests from up top are the norm... and often about quite serious matters. Bear in mind that some of these people have little to no experience in Higher Education and their backgrounds are mainly focused on 'income generation'. -In keeping with the above, one member of the EMG has a blatant gender-bias and I am aware of three or four incidents involving a Director that on their own would be sackable offenses, yet they remain in post. -Staff morale is at an all-time low due to several restructures in a short period of time. The most recent one seeing people who have been at the company for many years turfed out with only a day's notice. No handover. Remaining staff lean on each other for support in constant fear that another clear out is on the way. -The acquisition of MetFilm School was farcical. Due to a lack of due diligence, key information was never discussed or thought about until such a time as it became apparent to EMG, which meant a lot of scrambling to put things right at short notice.... even if these things had been flagged months earlier by staff who were lower down the chain of command. Many MetFilm staff were shown the door, despite being told in the first meeting with BIMM that this was not going to happen. Those who weren't dismissed either got out as soon as possible or are still trying their damndest to leave. -BIMM is owned by a venture capitalist, which tells you all you need to know about their priorities.
