Every second at this company will depress you more than the last - Anonymous employee Essentra Employee Review

There are some seriously corrupt business dealings within this company- it’s never good when you’re told to organise things while making sure you don’t leave a paper trail for auditors! I have never worked for a company where staff are treated with less respect. There is an awful culture within the company that is guaranteed to make you feel totally worthless. Forced overtime without being paid or giving time in lieu seems to be fairly common practice even if it means you have less than 5hours between finishing and starting work when travelling for the business The company does not seem to be worried about trivial matters such as the legality of their actions. Several changes to the employment contract have been made without staff signing agreement. They say the decision has been made by collective agreement despite the employment contract specifically stating that there is no collective agreement that affects the terms of the contract. They consider all staff to be their least important commodity. Even if you are the only person in the company with a real depth of knowledge following an acquisition then they are arrogant enough to assume you can be easily replaced. They don’t however put any time into allowing you to train other staff members in the belief that they will be able to retain business without being able to provide the level of service to their customers. This also helps to make sure if you take time off you will know you are coming back to a massive workload. They are also happy to overload people with work so that there is no way they can complete their daily tasks and have any sense of job satisfaction at the end of the day. If you question the management then you will soon find there are nasty rumours circulating about you within the company though no one will actually tell you to your face what they are accusing you of. Alternatively you may end up with serious disciplinary action being taken for very minor complaints which would usually be dealt with on an informal basis in the first case. HR offer no support and I have personally been told by a member of HR in a disciplinary setting that as it was my managers word against mine they would agree with the manager despite written evidence to the contrary. The pay for many roles is nowhere near adequate. As senior staff leave their tasks will be passed on to those with the lowest wages in the company and there is very little reward. If you do ever receive a pay rise it will not bring the wage up to match comparable jobs in the area but you are expected to show high levels of gratitude while they do their best to work you into the ground. They try to make people feel better by running employment surveys and occasionally putting a little money into staff events or giving staff a load of branded rubbish they don’t want. I’m sure that employees would rather receive a salary that allows them to live in the area without being on the breadline. I would not recommend this company to employees or to customers and hope that one day they face the consequences of their actions.