Fifty Digital Reviews

Personal life suffers, asks too much of employees

Fifty present themselves as having a fun, startup-esque environment but beneath the surface are little more than just a two-faced corporate and cliquey one that’s outgrown the vibe that they present to the outside world. They have some big name clients but with that comes a working environment that consistently pushes you to a breaking point and they are capable of treating staff incredibly harshly - even those who have been with them for multiple years. There’s a lot of really talented, creative and hard-working people at Fifty - the majority of whom don’t get anywhere near the credit that they deserve from senior management because they seem to have certain members of staff who they would single out for praise more often than others. This would leave you wondering whether you would actually receive any kind of acknowledgement in company wide meetings or updates after working flat-out, which I found demotivating. The nature of the agency means that employee’s are consistently expected to take on unrealistic workloads, which personally left me feeling overworked and burnt out on a fairly regular basis. In my time at Fifty this often came at the expense of my mental and physical health far more than I have ever experienced in any other job before or since. Whenever I mentioned that my workload was becoming unrealistically challenging or monotonous, I found that things would change for a little bit then gradually build up to the same levels again over the following few weeks/months and I felt like not enough follow up was done to help with this. It left me feeling unmotivated and unproductive (admittedly there were times where I could have spoken up about this sooner than I did - but I don’t feel like the nature of the agency or the resource that we had at the time would have meant that much would have been different). I felt like the HR ‘department’ would quite often tell us how important their staff’s welfare was to them. The company culture was forced and fake - repeatedly telling us that they wanted everyone to feel like they were in the ‘Fifty Family’ - that we were all in it together and that people would be supported when they needed it. However when things were busy and this became inconvenient, their tolerance for this kind of feedback seemed like a burden if it meant that the client would receive content later than they had been told. In my experience the agency didn’t do anywhere near enough to help staff with this side of things. In workshops we were encouraged to just go for a walk at lunch-time because that could supposedly alleviate burn-out. Whenever I worked late on into an evening or at a weekend - this time was never offered back to me as Lieu. Despite what they have said in presentations and interviews about how important people are to them, I don’t believe that the two owners care about their employee’s welfare - enough people have passed through the agency in the past and cited issues with workloads and mental health.They tell the outside world that they care about their staff first and foremost but I saw very little action that demonstrated that. Fridays could be consistently later finishes and the ‘perk’ (if you can really even call it that) of a 4pm finish on a Friday for two months over the summer wasn’t something I really had the opportunity to take at all. Client requests were always prioritised over the working/life balance of employees and contributed towards negative feelings and resentment. It made me feel stupid working very late or overnight to deliver something that wouldn’t even be looked at or reviewed until the following week anyway. Progression doesn’t seem to encouraged or consistent across departments - which left me feeling like I didn’t really see how the agency was going to help me consistently develop new skills long-term. This was exacerbated when I watched freelancers being given more interesting projects to work on whilst I left to do create exactly the same sort of dull/unoriginal content I’d already made tonnes of. This would leave me feeling like I was stagnant as a creative, especially when managers and line managers were a little distant and it could be weeks on end before I spoke with them. There’s a disconnect between the owners/senior management and staff lower down - and they can be very brutal with how they treat people. You only need to have a look at the incredibly sarcastic and disrespectful reply that they have given a previous Glassdoor review to see how they are capable of treating people. They started a daily register to see who was attending the office, which was taken without people’s awareness of this going on - despite having no formal or enforced office attendance policy. They would encourage staff to come in on days that they had clients in to try and create more of a buzz/vibe in the office by buying them pizza - even their Agency of the Year audit they did in a co-working space instead of their own actual office. Fortunately I’m in a much happier place now - I have the creative freedom and responsibility to do what I know I can do (and didn't previously get much of an opportunity) - away from Fifty’s ‘culture’ and their ping-pong tables.