HUB Financial Solutions Reviews

Work environment Targets Progression is based on who you know rather than skill set Hardest working teams earn the lesser salary and the bigger salaries go to 'slacking' management who don't know how to manage teams.

Although their parent company has made it on to the Times 100 list of top places to work, please do not assume that their culture has somehow filtered into the Belfast offices in any measurable way. It hasn’t, there’s more than just an ocean separating the two offices. During my time there I saw that employees fell into one of two groups - the first who strongly disliked their operating practices and left around 2 years or less of service, and the latter who will very likely retire at the company decades from now. Despite advertising itself as an extremely friendly and accommodating employer, please note there are serious downsides to working here assuming you don’t come from a particular demographic - this office is not run as a meritocracy, isn’t particularly progressive in it’s views. At times it feels the way working for a family-run business does, and this shouldn’t be the case for it’s size and given it’s inclusion in an LSE listed firm’s group of companies. Belfast senior management seem to not want Just Retirement HQ looking too closely into how things are run, and I suspect they know uncomfortable changes might be made were they allowed to take a stronger direction on running things. The treatment of staff seemed to come down more to how much management liked them, than how good they were at their jobs - there were a few senior staff members who would battle to find another job at their current salary and title if they left the company, yet weren’t really encouraged to upskill, or do very much about the fact that they no longer measured up to current industry standards. It doesn’t really matter how much you bring to the table in terms of skill and productivity - this is very much the kind of place where you need to drink the kool-aid if you want to fit in. Other downsides included a strong emphasis on presenteeism - it didn’t matter if you weren’t in a customer facing role, flexi-time was discouraged and pre-COVID remote working was too. I heard of one staff member having the frequency of their bathroom breaks being monitored, and even questioned by their team lead. I also saw more than one incident of bullying get swept under the carpet - one staff member was even instructed by management to no longer communicate electronically with their bully, only verbally, despite their protest that this only led to their being verbally insulted and harassed in front of their coworkers instead. Staff were a little too comfortable at work and unprofessional in their demeanour towards each other - from cycling clothes being left to dry on the radiator inside the office, eating microwaved fish at their desks, conversations about topics a little too radioactive to be considered safe for work, to whispering, gossiping and overtly cliquey behaviour. This did not feel like an office with grown up professionals and was a very unpleasant place to be at times. Lastly, I saw behaviour from management that fell into a very grey area in terms of ethics - such as making enquiries into the history of a workers private life, pressuring another to cancel a days leave they booked months in advance for an extremely important private appointment in order to attend a non-essential presentation / team-building event, changing expected terms in an employment contract and not highlighting this to the candidate, and finally having exit interviews held not on the final day - but three weeks before leaving, so ‘the reasons for you leaving are still fresh in your mind’. Pull the other one, HR, it has bells on it.