Potentially Good Opportunities But Problematic Management Style - Anonymous employee Farsight Consulting Employee Review

Thank you for recognising some positives as well as highlighting some negative aspects of your experience at Farsight. Word count is limited here, but we have attempted to address all of the points you've raised in sufficient detail. I'm pleased that you enjoyed working with the team. We’re proud that we have a great bunch of bright and intelligent people who work well together and look after each other. We encourage everyone in the team to self-reflect on their own performance; as well as receiving feedback from their peers, clients, and other members of the team. We have very high standards and the team consistently receive great feedback about the quality of their work from our clients. Most people ask for specific examples with lots of detail as this makes it easier to understand things. I’m sorry if you felt that the way in which we provided feedback to you was unhelpful and caused you any anxiety or frustration. We do try to adapt our approach for each individual and we do continually check back with the team to make sure that feedback is helpful and they feel supported. Sometimes we must give difficult feedback when someone needs to improve; and sometimes we must do that multiple times if there are still things that need to be better. Our clients expect a lot from us; and we must deliver. Irrespective of that, if you had a negative experience then the management team and I would like to apologise; that would never be our intention. I don’t think it’s fair to use words like “borderline abusive”; we simply do not act like that. We are a people-focused organisation; everyone goes to great lengths to support each other; and above all we are decent, kind people. We have a dedicated Head of People who is impartial, very accessible and whose role is focused on the wellbeing of the team. We have multiple routes that people can use to provide feedback: personal coaches; a buddy system; an improvements wall (for suggestions about anything); an anonymous feedback form; and online channels to encourage the team to share and discuss their ideas. We also have a documented, transparent and fair complaints process. Any negative feedback is handled quickly, fairly and sensitively. I think you would have found this to be true if you had raised any concerns whilst you were with us. It’s not true to say that management don’t hold themselves to the same standard as the team. We are one team and everyone is treated the same. We know we’re not perfect or always right. We have a very open, flat structure and we encourage criticism across the company so that we can all learn together. We have changed the way the company works many times based on criticism and feedback from the team, and will no doubt continue to do so. Thank you for recognising that there are interesting projects across the company. The feedback from the team is that the quality and range of opportunities that they are offered is good. You don’t have a positive opinion of our Internal Projects. I don’t share your view. Internal projects provide the team with opportunities to contribute to the business – which many people enjoy and ask for. Many of the team are interested in running companies themselves in the future, and we want to support this ambition and give them early experience. There are always less “exciting” things that need to be done; and we believe it’s important that the team appreciate why these things are important. Internal projects include business development; recruitment; business strategy; bid-writing; coaching; designing and delivering training sessions; and building new software. These projects are interesting, varied and important. They can also be challenging and we do expect people to reach the same high standards when they work on these projects. Some projects explore things that we are thinking about doing. Not all of these are taken forward, and some take time to come to fruition – I can understand if this is where some of your frustration may have come from. It is not accurate to say that promotion decisions are opaque, arbitrary and based on how management “think” people are doing. We hold regular sessions with the team where we explain how to do a good job and get promoted (with measurable examples). Promotion decisions are not made by management in isolation. They are made by the group of people at the level to which a person is being considered for promotion. This ensures that decisions are fair and open and supports people who are being promoted. Finally, I’d like to address the claim that the reviews on Glassdoor are somehow manufactured. The team are smart, strong minded and principled and wouldn’t stand for that – and we wouldn’t ask them to. We encourage the team to write Glassdoor reviews, but it's the individual’s choice, and it’s up to them what they say. We do not pre-approve them. Thank you once again for your feedback and comments; we wish you well for the future.