The beatings will continue until morale improves! - Software Support Vaultex UK Employee Review

This is based on working in the Birchwood administrative office near Warrington. If you value good ethics, fair treatment of employees, and competent senior management, then you do not want a job at Vaultex. Vaultex is one of those companies that looks great at first but after a short while you start to see the cracks. The staff themselves are amazing. Very talented and mostly happy to help each other (when they're not being worked into the ground). They've been completely demoralised by management. Staff are not listened to. Their advice and warnings are ignored, leading management to make rash and ill-conceived decisions. Usually if a project works, it's because the staff have put in the extra effort to make it work, DESPITE the way that management have hamstrung them. Most of the senior management care little for the staff around them. It's very clear that people here are a resource to be used and cast aside if necessary. There seems to be various power struggles going on. Doesn't matter what happens to staff in these struggles. No effort is made to hang on to expertise. Valued staff are allowed to leave without any effort to retain them. Or worse, in some cases, prominent and cohesive people are just fired because they aren't willing to show the same lack of ethics that the senior management wield. Over the last few years, the company has lost some of its most talented devs, analysts and middle managers. The result is entire departments who have extensive knowledge gaps on in house products and systems. This was so bad at one point that an entire dev team was charged with maintaining systems that they'd never used before. The staff were mostly new on that team and did an amazing job of pulling together. But they shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place as stress levels were through the roof. Recently a new CIO was hired. Their first action was to fire several key people and then to bring in their own people to replace them. The CEO is aware of this, they just don't seem to care. The resultant exodus has left departments understaffed and demoralised with huge gaps in knowledge and experience. If you're applying for a job at Vaultex, the chances are that you're being brought in to try and mitigate some of this loss. Bear in mind that as a lot of the systems used are very niche and often developed in house (by developers who have since left), your learning curve is going to be roughly akin to running in to a brick wall. One thing that Vaultex does well is the number of awareness days/weeks. Such as mental health awareness. However, most of it is completely undone by the company never following through on it's own advice. It's like the old joke: Company : We'd like to promote good mental health in the workplace. Employees : How about hiring more people so we feel less pressured? Increase our pay so we can keep up with the spiralling cost of living so we're not completely stressed out? Company : LOL No! Try yoga or something! You will often be expected to work weekends, but will only be offered time off in lieu (at a 1 to 1 ratio) rather than get any overtime. Oh, and if you mess up you will be nailed to the wall for your mistake. Blame culture is rife. Pros ---- Good pension Bonus up to 10%. Technically it's up to 20% but this is never awarded. Occasional rewards (Ice cream day, pizza day, curry day) Some great camaraderie between staff Central and accessible location 35hr working week