Pros
Nice people to work with Good location Regular booze-fuelled events
Cons
A 45-year-old company that says it is like a startup to explain away why it has zero procedures in place. Training is unstructured, undocumented, lacking, and done on an ad hoc basis by overworked colleagues when they have a spare second. As there is no manual, you’ll have to guess answers and be told you’re wrong. Negative reinforcement is the key here. Your workload is literally overwhelming. Your contract quotes a 38 hour week plus reasonable overtime however you’ll immediately be rostered 40 hours. You’ll have to get there early too and leave later as the hot desk policy means you will pack and unpack each day. If you get stuck on a long phone call that’s your own fault. If you’re on the Premium team, client events are in your own time on a weeknight, so there’s usually 5 hours of unpaid overtime there. When it’s busy, or there is a system outage (there’s been 3+ in the last 6 months) it’s all hands on deck, and you’ll be told to work through lunch with no break. However, don’t worry as you’ll get a delicious grill’d burger for lunch instead of being paid overtime. You’ll be asked to run diversity networks which is excellent. The downside is these are also in your own time with zero time in lieu given. Work/life balance is lacking so severely to the point that staff turnover is ridiculously high. The mental health of the remaining staff is compromised, and the lacklustre counselling service is useless. You will start as early as 5:45am in the winter, meaning that you can kiss your social life away in the evenings. There were times I’d finish at a client event at 10:30pm and had to start the next day at 6:30am. Ask to see your KPIs BEFORE you start. You’ll notice you’re required to go see clients but at the same time complete a certain number of calls per day. How these are recorded is negligently lacking, so you’ll often be told you’re doing a poor job even though you’re working yourself to the bone. KPIs are given to you late in the quarter and sometimes are noticeably different. KPI reviews are completed so long after the quarter finishes. Commissions are paid another 3 months later, so they lose any meaningful connection to the quarter you earned them in. Although you’ve done the work, you need to remain at IG when the bonuses/comms are paid, or you will forfeit these. The priority is converting clients to Professional, no wait it’s to get referrals, no wait it’s contacting clients about something urgent like a margin change, no wait it’s answering calling clients quickly. Get used to conflicting and shifting priorities. The stress this causes is considerable. The amount of admin required is positively ridiculous and has a negative effect. For example, you’ll need to document the same conversation in four separate areas. This dramatically slows staff down with management conceding they can do little about it. Managers are arrogant and dismissive about this and have no experience in the role they’re criticising you about. Career progression is promised, but absent. They’ll create some management positions, but not advertise them. Instead, they’ll award them unchallenged to staff they like.
