In 2017 two higher members of staff bought into the Board. Ask any member of staff who was there pre-2017, whether they've quit since or are still there, they will all agree that this is when things started going downhill.
Throughout 2017, Ledger Bennett picked up a lot of enterprise clients, based in the USA. Deservedly? Depends what you know.
Ledger Bennett was booming. Thier US expansion was quickly prioritised and many (and we all discussed this all the time) in the UK felt neglected and that the US office was placed on a pedestal. The Board got dollar signs in their eyes. They over-hired in the UK and failed to delegate work effectively while recognising the efforts people in the UK were giving.
During this time they spent money frivolously on surface level stuff such as a kitchen extension and a ridiculously lavish 2017 Christmas Party (that was lackluster), and shipping UK staff to San Francisco without a thought. And it was all for the board to show off and feel good about themselves and pretend they were like all the big London agencies Ledger Bennett wishes it was.
You can measure the drop in staff morale by looking at the 2016 Christmas Party vs. the 2017 Christmas Party. The end of 2016 you had a growing company that was looking forward to the future as a team. The staff was growing steadily and everyone felt connected and proud. The party was incredibly inclusive and there was no underlying elephant in the room. Everyone felt they had a voice and a part to play. Everyone who remembers this Christmas Party thinks fondly of it.
Fast forward to the Christmas Party 2017. You can tell the Board was going for a "bigger and better" Christmas Party to 2016. It was lavish and over the top. It should have been incredible. But anyone from the previous Christmas party will tell you it failed to live up the previous year because the atmosphere was different. There were too many people hired too quickly, the bond was gone (to no fault of any new staff), a hierarchy of importance was now felt, and the Americans had all been flown in for a week and given full special treatment and spotlight. The rest of us fell to the wayside.
And this continued to be seen as we moved into 2018. The UK staff continued to be neglected and ignored, and despite many of us coming to members of the board with our issues, it didn't matter. Because Ledger Bennett was about to hit a disappointing blip, and the staff were about to pay for it.
Between January 2018 to July 2018, at least 10 long-term core members of staff quit. And all of these people are those who had been there at least 3 years or more and made up important parts of the business from all over. And then they realised how much they'd mismanaged staff and work in 2017, so they made several people redundant on top of this!! Morale crumbled.
Members of the Board wonder how they can motivate staff to work harder, and put time into getting a job done just right. Well, you just lost a lot of people who loved Ledger Bennett by cleverly forcing them out when it suits you, driving them away with poor management, broken promises and never listening to their grievances. Now you're left with a good few and mostly new people who only started last year and aren't wise to your practices yet.
Those of us who have left and those of us who have stayed, we're all still in contact. We're networked and we're all on the same page and continue to help and support each other. So you can read this and try to feel smug as you win all your contracts and probably call a business meeting where you passive-aggressively tell everyone not to discuss what goes on at Ledger Bennett. But even so, you know we're here, you know what you did.
