Audley Travel

2.0

22 Sept 2016

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

The familiarisation trips really are fantastic and you can see why clients book with Audley again and again as the organisation is usually very efficient and the areas you get to see are truly magnificent. The people you actually work with within Audley are brilliant. It’s such a sociable company and if for whatever reason you’ve had a bad day, there’ll always be someone to join you for a drink after work, either at the office bar (another perk) or at one of the local pubs. There are a couple of really good clubs such as restaurant club and 5-a-side football, to name a couple. The Summer & Christmas parties are always highlights, well arranged and everybody tends to have a great time. As to pay, my experience of the pay scale is not at all positive (more about that later) but I know that if you’re in a popular area that’s selling easily, it can be lucrative. The offices in Witney & London are both really cool. You get free fruit juice, innocent smoothies, milk, fruit and there’s a reasonably-priced tuck shop and/or canteen for those people who walked half-way to the underground and realised that they’d left their sandwiches in the fridge.

Cons

When I joined the company last September, I would only ever focus on the pros of the company because they so outweighed the cons that it wasn’t really worth mentioning anything bad. However, as many people will know, there was a change in “investor” around January 2016, the new company being 3i, the old one being Equistone. Since then, alas, the atmosphere has changed completely. 1. The company is on a serious cost saving mission and the way they’ve chosen to save on costs is to get rid of a substantial chunk of the workforce. The way they go about this is BRUTAL and utterly inconsistent. Most often, people will be called into an interview room where there’ll be a member of the HR team and a Head of Programme who will tell you that they’re terminating your contract and that you’re not allowed to return to your desk – this has become such a joke that it now has a name: “being trapdoor-ed”. There are other mysterious disappearances, sometimes labelled as people being off sick, sometimes people who quite simply appear to be jumping from a sinking ship. All that’s left are people who seem to have their heads down, working longer hours to make up for their increased workloads from all the leavers. Not a good atmosphere. 2. I alluded to this above: there are some areas that are not particularly busy at the moment, possibly due to the virus Zika but possibly other reasons too. People who are struggling to sell these areas will be on a fairly slender salary of around 24 – 26K. If they’re lucky enough to pass their probation period AND stay at the company for 12 months, they’ll top you up to 28.5K. However, it seems as if dozens of people are not being given this uplift. 3. Progression within the company is exceptionally limited. There are very few managers who progress from within. Most come from outside, have no idea about our systems and have to be taught by other members of the team. To me, this really doesn’t make sense. In fact, it’s just stupid. 4. It’s disappointing that the only good reviews from the company on this seem to be from management. The post below labels a ‘con’ as the communication between the three offices. If this were an unbiased review from caring employees, they would raise the issue of the stale atmosphere and fear of being fired over Skype not working, trust me. I could go on in more detail but I’d hate to bore you.

Audley Travel Response

Upon joining Audley all of our Country Specialists go on a one month familiarisation trip to their destination of specialism in order to taste ‘The Audley Way’ and experience the excursions and properties that our clients may choose to experience themselves. I’m glad that you found your trip to be a rewarding experience, I certainly enjoy hearing about them! Audley is a very sociable company and that is as much the case today as it was when I joined over ten years ago, we strive to create a supportive network of colleagues that not only work together but also enjoy spending time together taking advantage of our various clubs and sports teams. When I joined Audley all those years ago I joined a flourishing travel company and I am proud to say that it remains the case today. Our investors will enable us to push to the next level and in doing that we shall develop and grow our people accordingly. Our investor has also enabled us to offer the ‘Employee Partnership Scheme’ enabling employees with three years service or more to join a unique share scheme and directly benefit from Audley’s success. I can assure you that not a single employee of Audley’s has been terminated as part of a cost saving mission and it concerns me that this is your perception of how we operate. Sometimes an employee will decide the role is not for them, sometimes an employee will not perform at the level required of them, but this is no different to any other comparable company and our thorough recruitment and training programme ensures that these cases are rare. I cannot discuss any single employee case in detail but I can assure you that each employee is treated as an individual and no decision is taken lightly, whether by Audley or the employee. As I mentioned above, a growing company means growing opportunities and we are very happy to be increasing these. As a tour operator a large portion of our positions are within the sales team but there are opportunities for progression into product, management and many other service related roles. Our annual appraisal system enables employees looking for their next challenge to create career development plans alongside their manager and we are great believers in growing talent internally. I was really surprised to read that you felt that not enough managers are promoted from within, as things stand currently, 50% of our managers started with Audley as Country Specialists and promotion from within is considerably higher than comparable organisations. I hope that this has put some of your concerns to rest and thank you for taking the time to review your time with Audley.

A sinking ship - Anonymous employee Audley Travel Employee Review

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