Disorganised leadership and poor communication, but some great people - Anonymous employee Sustrans Employee Review

2.0
9 June 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Plenty of passionate and intelligent colleagues who truly care and believe in the work they do. There's a good protection of work/life balance. The mission and goals of the company are great, it's just a shame that the way in which the company is run hugely detracts from this.

Cons

In my time at Sustrans I was left quite isolated and with an insufficient amount of work to do, in spite of repeated efforts to ask for more responsibilities. Re-structuring decisions at the company left a lot of uncertainty for my, and many other, roles -consequently a lot of the people I respected most at the company left in the wake of decisions coming from senior leadership. It's worth noting that certain members of senior leadership at Sustrans Scotland leave a lot to be desired when it comes to communication, competency and compassion. Sustrans pays really quite poorly compared to other similar companies - while in 2022 there was a promise of a pay review taking this discrepancy into account alongside the rising cost of living/inflation in the UK, the end result from this review came in woefully under what was promised. Such instances really let the company down in terms of culture and leadership. Sustrans has a lot to learn about mental health support as well - I returned to work from a depression diagnosis to discover I was at risk of redundancy. It took a month after this bombshell to get any kind of clarity on my job security, which struck me as careless at best, and negligent at worst. I decided to move on after this debacle, as I was left feeling isolated and disregarded by the company.

Explore other reviews about Sustrans

5.0
12 Dec 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people are great there

Cons

Lots of restructures taking place

2.0
29 July 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Passionate, hardworking colleagues Good work-life balance

Cons

No leadership or budget for key workstreams that are supposedly central to the charity's mission. No communication or coordination between teams on these key issues, leading to chaos, inconsistent delivery, frustration, resentment and low morale. Hypocritical leadership - lots of waffle about living our values but no thought given to basics like providing the direction, tools and budget for staff to do their jobs properly. Requests to feedback on rebranding ideas, fundraise for the NCN's 30 year anniversary and join workshops to help put 'our refreshed values' into practice are hard to swallow when we have been waiting 4 months and counting for our payrise and the cackhanded, hugely overrunning restructure has dented everyone's morale.

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