8y
Hi there,
Thanks for your feedback. You've clearly taken time to reflect on your experience at Goodlord and I'm very sorry to hear that it wasn't a positive one for you.
I'm not sure when you worked at Goodlord, but I wanted to address a number of points you raised directly. I think our culture, leadership and structures around career progression and management have changed a lot as we've grown as a company.
Leadership:
- We have an experienced CEO, William Reeve at the helm of the management team. He's had operating or board roles at Lovefilm, Secret Escapes, and Zoopla. Our management team as a whole now encompasses a wealth of experience from different industries and types of company.
Communications:
- We have put a number of different communication methods in place to ensure we are highly transparent with exactly where we're at as a company, including a new and improved Friday huddle where we focus in on what a particular department is doing and how they're performing. The good, the bad and the ugly is openly shared and there's a Q&A afterwards where anyone can ask the leadership team whatever they like.
- Aside from this, we've focused in on whole team communications when processes are changing or there's developments in our product to ensure that everyone has the information needed to do their job well.
Work-life balance:
- It's certainly true that in the past we have had issues with work-life balance. As you point out, this is a startup trope that leads to burnout and frustration. We've worked really hard to address this, with managers taking the lead to ensure people go home when the day is finished. I'm pleased to say that working later than 6pm is definitely now the exception rather than the rule.
- Managers also check in explicitly about how people are feeling about their work-life balance in every single 1:1, meaning that if it is off-kilter for any reason, we can address it quickly and re-evaluate workload.
Management:
- In Q4 last year, we introduced a comprehensive manager training program which covers every aspect of management - from 1:1's and giving feedback to how to provide a good onboarding experience.
- We have a clear and universally applied policy on internal moves. No-one is ever promoted into a role without their skills and experience being properly evaluated via an interview, and compared to external candidates in most instances.
- We also recently introduced new Goodlordian guidance on how we make salary and promotion decisions. Everyone at Goodlord is guaranteed a salary review on at least an annual basis, and all promotions have to be approved by the entire management team.
Office culture:
- I would accept that in the past we haven't had that much diversity in the type of social events we had as a company. I'm pleased to say this has changed, and in the last quarter alone, we've had open-mic nights, a range of talks from different speakers and free breakfasts, none of which revolve around alcohol. We think hard about the inclusivity and accessibility of the team events we have.
- We absolutely do not tolerate people coming into work unable to perform their duties for any reason.
One area we still have a long way to go on is the diversity of the senior team, however, we're moving forward on this on several fronts. For example, our entired interview process is designed around reducing bias (from the structured way in which we interview, to how we score candidates). We have training on reducing bias in interviewing which all of our interviewers take.
Again, I want to thank you for taking the time to give feedback. Obviously none of the above comments about initiatives we've got going on represents an endpoint - we're constantly evolving and changing, thanks in no small part to honest and open feedback from all Goodlordians.
The Goodlord People team
