JLA Reviews

My opinion only... This organisation was, without doubt, the worst place I have ever worked. I was brought in as a senior hire, and having spent my career at other successful organisations, I can assure you that JLA is categorically terrible. I put up with it for 2 weeks and then quit, which should tell you everything you need to know. Awful CEO. Actually has a sign on her office saying ‘expect confrontation and sarcasm’ upon entering. All of her team are (understandably) afraid to put a foot wrong. The blame culture is prevalent and perpetuated from the top. Talks the talk of investing in, and improving, the organisational culture. The reality; the company is PE backed and its a ‘tick box’ exercise designed to make the company more attractive to future buyers and to increase valuation. Let’s face it, corporate culture is a buzzword nowadays, it’s on the top of any investors/buyers list, and any diligent buyer would want to know that the culture is good. Does JLA actually care about its employees? Yeah, that’s a no. Extremely high pressure environment with constantly changing demands (though a clear strategy so I’ll give them that). As succinctly put by one employee ‘at JLA we jump off the cliff, and build the parachute on the way down’. My advice, find another job.

Salary is not great, from speaking to people in other departments they have the same opinion. Seems most money and incentives go to Sales and Operations are usually left out of this, yes Sales sell the initial product but it is Operations that then provide the follow up and cater to the customer. Bonuses are monthly but vary depending on 5 targets, some of them are department wide which in my opinion is completely unfair as not everyone has something to do with achieving that target. For instance, hitting Total Care time to fix, in my role I have no involvement with Total Care customers but my part of my bonus depends on achieving this. Another part of bonus is also dependent on our engineers completing jobs ASAP, again, nothing I can really control. If any justified wage increase is brought up its promptly disregarded. You may get amazing feedback from customers and other, senior members of staff but you won't get any genuine recognition or reward, just an email. Theres no chance of career progression really and no real promotions within teams. You can only hope to increase your wage if another job opens up but thats all dependent on people leaving. Meant to have monthly reviews with our managers for personal development but they'll get rearranged many times and no real difference will come out of them. Only way to bulk up your wage in Ops is overtime but even this gets monitored. Along with the great members of staff there are also really rude and unhelpful people as well who are allowed to be rude and unhelpful but if this is brought up to management nothing is ever done because 'thats who they are, or 'they're under a lot of pressure/stress', which should not be tolerated. Can't pass judgement or opinion on the current CEO right now as he as only just moved into the role after our previous CEO Helen Ashton left (was removed?) rather swiftly after 2 years I believe. We have been advised this is on an interim basis but this is always the case in senior leadership roles, pretty sure it will end up being a permanent move if it hasn't been made so already.