Benoy Reviews

I was worked for Benoy in their London office for 7 years. They’re a hugely profitable company but that’s about the kindest thing I can say about them. The management of the company has changed drastically since it’s successful years when they expanded across the world. The great team that took the company from being a regional UK architect to being a worldwide multi-disciplinary design firm has moved on or been asked to leave by the current management - the children of the owner. Replacement directors are a selection of people that get on with the owners son, mostly white, older and public school educated with little experience of actually completing architectural projects. I’d say they’re only a concept architect these days. The main issue with the current regime is the lack of focus on Architecture. The management team is corporate business focussed as opposed to most architecture practices that have architects and designers in key positions driving design quality. The driving force behind Benoy is money and this is deeply unsatisfying for many that work there. The company has (at best) yearly redundancy rounds which have the effect of demotivating all staff. One can only imagine the management employ this practice to keep their staff on their toes and drive down wages. In reality it only destroys morale and loses the loyalty of a good quality workforce. The coronavirus pandemic is only the latest in a yearly excuse for lowering working conditions and making redundancies without needing to. Redundancies are usually followed by snap recruitment drives because they realise they’ve over promised clients and have no staff to resource their commitments. Clients think they have a trusted experienced team, they’re lucky to get an architectural assistant. Be aware the company often tells their staff and anyone who will listen what a great company they are and how good they are to their staff. According to them their staff have upward mobility and great opportunities to progress their career. This is pure lip service and does not represent the reality of being employed by them. If you are considering taking on a role at Benoy I would recommend making sure that you’re aware of the culture of the office and in particular the management. Many previous members of staff have suffered with their mental health because of the way they were treated why ‘the family’ and in particular how they were forced to leave the company. It’s essential to think of the company as a high pressure job with potential for it to end very quickly so your salary should be considerable to compensate you for the working conditions and the way you will be treated at some point. It’s worth mentioning that the architectural press regularly report that the sole owner (directors are never bought in so they’re easily disposable) takes millions out of the business every year at the same time as making staff redundant and stagnating wages in order to squeeze more and more money out of the business. The huge profits the business make are not shared throughout the company. My advice would be to look at one of their competitors or one of the many companies set up by their old directors. Lead8 in Asia or Leonard Design in the UK. You might be treated with more respect.

HR & Upper Management. The CEO and his family continual gaslighting of staff that they 'care' about their employees. This company has changed considerably since the CEO change a few years ago. There's been a conscious effort to do as little as possible to support or keep staff as there is a cultural belief everyone is easily replaceable and loyalty is not required. There will be always some mug to work ridiculous hours on minimal pay or benefits? There is a supposed private, anonymous survey system for complaints and comments which is distributed between staff every six months. Mid managers openly discuss what individual staff have written as the system is not actually anonymous. Benoy are really happy to exploit people's good will and hard work to the point of burnout. There's little or no opportunity to truly express how much pressure one is under as work & profit come first right? There's no QA or technical management of design processes from Stage 3 onwards, with major implications of the quality of work. This in turn, then ends up in a frenzy at Stage 5 to rectify fundamentally flawed earlier design work. It is too easy for technically weaker staff, to pull the wool over supposedly senior, experienced staff. Management have their favourites and it is difficult to navigate the favouritism. During the Pandemic, it was clear the company only used the Furlough system as they were bullied into this by everyone's dismay at making redundancies one week into the March 2020 UK lockdown. Benoy HR eventually put people on Furlough, but there was a handful number of staff who were made redundant straight away. This doesn't really fit the 'family' firm ethos that it is constantly rammed down the employees' throats? It is a slow death of a thousand cuts working at Benoy - this place destroys your soul, slowly until you finally notice the level of burnout. The Head of London has no connection his Design studio and is never there. What he does nobody knows.