Central 23 Reviews

3.7

62% would recommend to a friend

(8 total reviews)

53% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

8 reviews
1.0
4 May 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of responsibility, location of workspace, work colleagues, food and drink

Cons

Senior management, micromanagement, no HR, no work from home or hours flexibility, no development of designs or printing trials - not industry standard.

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Central 23 Response
5y
Hi Rosie, I hope you are safe and well during these tough times. Thank you for your review. I really appreciate the feedback. We are a small and young business. The senior management (Marcus and myself) have spent a lot of time learning how best to run this business over the past few years. We have recently started to use a phrase to describe team members and new recruits. That phrase is "Managers Of One". This essentially means people who can self manage and who lead rather than being led. We are trying to be as carful as we can when it comes to micromanagement. I never thought we were overly micromanaging but you clearly felt like we were and I'm glad we have taken leaps in the opposite direction. We still don't have an HR team member. It's hard to employ someone for HR when we are such a small team . Do you have any specific things you would have wanted from an HR department (we could potentially outsource some of these things)? We have changed our office hours and location of work. Everyone can choose the hours they work and where they work from. We have made these changes so we can attract and retain amazing people. We still have super high output expectations but we want to give the decision making power to the team. They now decide where and when they create that output. We don't care if someone is working from a hill in Scotland, the beach in Thailand or in the office as long as we are getting a lot done as a group. We are still using our office in Soho as a base. We aren't perfect and there is still a huge amount we can improve on (we are moving in that direction and hopefully new team members can make suggestions to help move us in that direction even faster). The design development process has also progressed with diversification of styles and greater autonomy for that team to try new things. We don't do printing trials but we do get samples of new products anytime a new production method is trialed. As I said, I appreciate the feedback and we have already made changes in many of the areas you mentioned. We are working with a great team who are free to not only share their views but also implement those. We are much happier when people are trying novel ideas and failing rather than shying away from trying new things. We are encouraging everyone to learn quickly which also means failing quickly (with the ultimate goal of succeeding)! Stay well. Luke Co-CEO
1.0
16 Mar 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Not many, one of the founders was nice but this was counteracted by his rude counterpart. Colleagues seemed nice.

Cons

- Rude, cowardly and disrespectful manager - Huge lack of support - No on boarding process at all - Lack of awareness for legal protocol, i.e. trying to get away with underpayment - How they present themselves when hiring (fun, relaxed and creative) is not who they are

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Central 23 Response
3y
Hello, Thank you for your review and for the feedback. I’m sorry to see that you had a negative experience at Central 23. We aren’t perfect and I know we make mistakes. We also strive to improve as much and as quickly as possible. That’s why reading this feedback is useful, it shines a light on some of the areas we need to work on. In regards to onboarding, I get where you're coming from. We have tried to prioritise finding candidates who can hit the ground running and who learn as we grow. We do this because we don’t yet have all the answers and want to surround ourselves with people who are hungry to figure out the answers themselves. A lot of the projects we work on are new frontiers for the business so we don’t always have a solid framework for onboarding. I would hope that the objectives for the role were quite clear from the start. However we will strive to make the objectives even more clear to help with onboarding. One of the ways we are trying to improve our onboarding is enhancing the social connections between new recruits and existing team members. We will also be putting together documentation that gives new employees more flavour into who we are and why we do what we do. We aren’t always able to offer support in relation to the granular workings of a specific role. The only reason for this is because we probably don’t have the answer to it ourselves and our hope is that the team member working on that project will figure it out. However we try extremely hard to offer support for our employees from a moral and motivational perspective. I’m sorry if you didn’t feel this and I’m going to make sure we make our support even stronger. In regards to lack of awareness for legal protocol, you’re right. We are a small business and we are not lawyers. We do however have an external law firm who consult for us. I can assure you that we would never knowingly underpay anyone. If we were to mistakenly underpay anyone, we would rectify it immediately. There have been instances in the past where we have had to let people go and often we will go over and above what is required by the law or stated in contracts because we feel it is the right thing to do (e.g. paying more than the notice period states). It’s a real shame your experience at Central 23 wasn’t positive. We do try our best to create a working environment that is fun, relaxed and creative. People can work where they want and can choose when they work. We want to surround ourselves with people who are happy and enjoy what they do. We really believe that if people aren’t happy, they shouldn’t be working with us and should find something that makes them happy. Positivity is infectious and oozes through to our products, marketing, customers and anyone else who may interact with our brand. Once again, I’m sad to see you didn’t have a good experience here. I hope you found something that was more suitable to you. Thanks for the feedback, we have discussed it internally and will be implementing some of the changes I mentioned above. Luke Shelley Co-CEO
5.0
11 June 2024

Amazing Creative Team!!

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working at Central 23 is like a breath of fresh air, filled with a lovely and welcoming team! With the business constantly growing and expanding, there are always new opportunities to learn, innovate, and face exciting challenges every day. Collaborating with Lucky Egg and Fuzzy Stars in our creative, buzzing studio adds even more fun to the mix. Plus, working in Soho is a huge pro in itself – it’s such a vibrant and lively area with a tonne of creative inspiration.

Cons

While working at a fast-paced, growing company can be challenging, it also pushes us to grow, innovate, and improve. This makes every achievement even more rewarding and helps us develop further.

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