Be suspicious of positive reviews here because they were written by newer employees at the desperate request of those trying to restaff the agency as it bleeds talent. The truth is that ENVOY has been sick for a while and the team, it seems, has finally had enough. People are quitting at a rate of two per week and none of the leaders are acknowledging it. They must sleep well at night telling themselves that this is an acceptable rate of churn, but it's not. I've worked for delusional men before, but the three founders of ENVOY take the top prize.
They simply cannot let go and trust the talent that they've hired to perform, which is suffocating and makes it difficult to grow in your career. They micromanage the work and every decision made in the company, which might be fine if they made respectable business decisions, had a better grasp on functional design, modeled greater overall intelligence, and took care of the team. But they don't. Instead, they fail to communicate a vision for the company or projects, throw money around that they don't really have, bottleneck work timelines, produce unusable user experiences, re-do a good amount of what their designers have done without offering constructive feedback as to why, and procrastinate addressing critical personnel needs. It takes months for managers to get their team members raises or get approval for basic requests like title or role changes that can help talent advance their careers. The growth of talent is not a priority at ENVOY.
They act like clients and talent alike should feel lucky to work with them. I've never been more embarrassed in my career than when sitting in client meetings where the founders hot-headedly argue with and even yell at our clients, nonsensically belaboring points and sounding like idiots because their egos cannot allow them to admit when they're wrong. Why anyone continues to work with them after pulling stuff like that is beyond me. If by "be bold" they mean "be loud and proud," then okay. That's not my definition of bold and I was ways taught to respect my customers. The founders are clinically incapable of asking for feedback or taking criticism. It's unfortunate that channels for feedback are so suffocated and disregarded by leadership that I feel compelled to write a Glassdoor review to share it.
They are taking on work they shouldn't in desperation for revenues against the recommendations of their knowledgeable department leaders, are too proud about the company they think they've built to blog or do anything most great agencies do to attract talent and work, act entitled rather than grateful to their successes, blame managers instead of themselves for their own poor approval ratings on internal surveys, and take no measures to become better leaders or managers. Between the three founders, there is no clear division of labor so you don't know whom to approach for different needs and you get the runaround to get anything approved. They hired a president to right the ship and do the dirty work they don't enjoy, but he's largely absentee, implemented dated corporate practices that sucked the lively startup life out of the company, and left a lot of people hating their jobs.
Everyone on the team can see the writing on the wall that they're about to lose major clients. The founders deny it rather than take ownership and communicate contingency plans, leaving people fearing for their livelihoods and going elsewhere. Whether it actually is or not (leadership has made no effort to openly convince the team that it's not), the agency feels like a sinking ship and low morale is palpable in the office. I was promised the opportunity to work for a different kind of agency. Alas, Envoy ended up being just another unremarkable labor shop sorely lacking a secret sauce and that forgets its only relevant and marketable asset is its talent.
