Pros
Family environment - At the start, it was genuinely a great place to work and had a proper family feel to the place with clear targets and in plain terms, a very happy and enjoyable place to work. The teams were very close, and people were valued however this has changed over time. Please note as with every business, there are some great people to connect with at ForrestBrown. Great Christmas parties and summer away days – The company definitely knows how to throw a party and the Christmas parties and summer away days that I have attended have been organised incredibly well and are always great fun. Internal Training and Development – There is a clear and effective internal training and development plan when it comes to R&D knowledge, with regular learning lab sessions (internal training sessions) which are good at ensuring that the business has the latest industry and regulatory knowledge.
Cons
Being at school – The company is not a place where you get treated like a professional, especially when in junior roles. The best way to describe the experience would be to compare it to school. You will get told off like you would when you are in Year 8 at school if you do something wrong. If you are employed as a Tax Associate you will be micro-managed as much as possible, so be prepared to go back to school (not enjoyable if you weren’t a big fan of school). Illogical promotion process – the company has been growing over time and during this period it is understandable that processes need to change. However, the company has a large reliance on statistics and using this to compare employees rather than actually looking at employee development from a personal and professional perspective. While many of the senior leaders (including team leads and HR Team) are reluctant to admit that deliverables and “tabs” are not the key focus of the promotion process, it is very evident that they are. The reliance on data and comparing employees based on data is something that the business needs to make a serious U-turn on! Ethical and professional behaviour – the company does not operate transparency in its communications and direction. The senior leaders have always worked behind closed doors and never consult the rest of the business before taking key decisions. In the past, we have even had senior leaders publicly request each employee to work 3-4 hours extra every day during the busy period (usually end of every quarter). There have also been fraudulent activities internally and behaviour that is not in line with the company’s values by senior leaders. These incidents and the responses from the company to these incidents have always been kept under covers. In situations such as these, rather than letting the rumour mill take over, clear internal communications would help these situations. I think it is long overdue that the company employed an internal communications manager purely to ensure that messaging can be clearly and correctly communicated. Lack of leadership experience – The company has been and currently is led by a leadership team where for many of them this is their first senior leadership role and it shows. Within a leadership team, there needs to be a balance of experience and “young blood”. The current leadership team is lacking in experience and does not know how to be leaders within a business of this size. There have been many instances where decisions made during the 2020 period have shown a lack of understanding such as not letting people work from certain locations during lockdown (when the whole working environment was based on online solutions such as Microsoft Teams, internal CRM systems, etc.) The inexperience is further amplified when there is a lack of business planning as the company has mainly been based around ambitious targets. However, yearly targets and bonus schemes are poorly organised and executed. In other businesses that I have worked at, business planning is something that is undertaken months or even years in advance and then tweaked closer to date to ensure that the targets and business objectives are in line with current industry conditions. Constant changes – The business is based on a hierarchical structure with 7-10 people per team. I believe this is a good structure for this type of business with a clear chain of command. However, the issue arises when the teams at the bottom of the hierarchy are constantly changed every 6 months. The company is definitely a high-performance environment (in line with the rest of the industry) and there is nothing wrong with that. The company or the leaders within the business needs to understand that teams need time to bond and become a “team” rather than just a set of individuals. Remuneration – The business is extremely good at enticing junior-level candidates in offering market salary. However, internal promotions do not equal significant salary increases and it means that there is no real incentive to make the step up. While performance-related bonuses can be part of the pay package, it is set up in such a way that it is very unorganised and poorly executed across the board. Potential redundancies – Given that the business is not growing at the moment and due to industry and regulatory pressures, I can most definitely see the business will be looking to reduce headcount. Revenue figures will be under pressure with government COVID funding offsetting R&D benefit for clients and a lack of investment in R&D from clients, the business will be looking to decrease overheads to ensure profitability.