Lacklustre, uninspiring, unprogressive firm that is obsessed with growth to the detriment of employees - Anonymous employee IQ-EQ Employee Review

2.0
25 Jan 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- There are some really nice and genuine people working here (although most of them tend to leave eventually) - Decent benefits - Good pension scheme - Good office locations - Work/life balance is better than expected

Cons

- Obsessed with growth to line the pockets of senior management to the detriment of all staff. - No progression, pay rises are linked to promotions and those are hard to come by. - Diversity & Inclusion is a tick-box exercise (which is years too late) and the firm does not care about its ethnic staff past putting faces on presentations and video slides. - Awful corporate culture without any structure but tries to market itself as a different type of firm, which to be fair is true. They're a lot worse. - Incompetent, ego-driven, out of touch managers who are given direct reports as a wage booster, rather than to actually develop junior staff which leads to uninspiring, unfulfilling relationships and a tonne of micro-managing. - Cliquey business where if you're not buddies with senior management, you're getting nowhere. - No moral integrity, lack of actual moral standing - the firm will always sway towards what is palatable. - Ethos, USP is all lip service with claims not really embedded or integrated within the culture of the firm. - High staff turnover, willingly understaffed to keep revenue high. - Repetitive, dull, uninspiring, unfulfilling work - mostly just admin. - Constant drive to just work, work, work with little reward and recognition so hard to actually enjoy your work or keep motivated. - Senior members of staff get away with bullying, discriminatory, offensive behaviour just because they are senior and/or fee-earning staff. - Low pay despite the high volumes of work you are asked to produce. - So-called colleagues who are obsessed with putting you in your place and throwing you under the bus to keep their good standing with awful managers and taking credit for your work. - Little respect or regard shown to junior staff - prepare to be barked at and treated like a second rate citizen by managers.

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IQ-EQ Response
5y
As a people focused business, we’re naturally disappointed to hear that your experience with us isn’t a positive one, that being said, we’d rather you told us than left it unsaid so thank you for sharing your experience with us even if it hurt just a bit. We’re particularly concerned to read your comments about what you describe as incidents of “bullying”, “discriminatory” and “offensive behaviour”. We operate a zero tolerance policy in this regard and work hard to ensure that we operate a safe workplace for everyone. We have appropriate policies, training programmes and safe channels in place to ensure that our people feel protected and safe while at work. In response to your other comments. We operate in a fast-paced commercial industry and pride ourselves on the calibre of our people and on our ability, despite current conditions, to deliver a high touch service to our clients. Thanks to a collective team effort, we continue to win new business and recruit new people to our business at a time when many other sectors aren’t as fortunate. Our commitment to delivering bespoke training and development to everyone has remained in place and has resulted in promotions and new opportunities being made over the course of the last year. We’ve achieved all of this because our team make it happen. We’re certainly not perfect and there’s lots more for us to do but we’re on a journey and we’re making good progress. There are many ways to talk to us about how you’re feeling, in person or anonymously, by completing our employee survey, which is currently live, or coming to talk with us directly. We’re here, ready and willing to chat so help us change what you feel is broken and make IQ-EQ a better place for you.

Explore other reviews about IQ-EQ

5.0
6 Nov 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work life balance is great

Cons

Turnover is an issue with younger associates.

2.0
25 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Co-workers, benefits, work from home, learning opportunities.

Cons

Compliance department is toxic: bullyish behavior by directors, enormous workloads on associates and junior staff while directors are not communicative or connected to clients and teams. Juniors are not allowed to state issues and concerns without the "employee liaisons" coming after them. Junior staff turnover is worse than McDonalds because of director treatment. Head of dept. does nothing when employees are not treated fairly.

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