Pros
Extra morning cardio as you get free parking... on the other side of the site - unless you're management that turn up 1 minutes before the start of the business day, and have a parking space right outside the building. 'Free tea and coffee' That's about it.
Cons
I genuinely do not know where to start. The senior management team is the least supportive and out of touch team I have worked with. Unrealistic expectations followed by unending workload, in which the management team do not understand the work themselves (so don’t expect any advice or support there). Toxic positive environment is enforced by majority of the management team, to the laboratory teams that are clutching to the last remains of their sanity and free time (that is persistently taken from them and filled with more work – this includes staying late, working through non-existent lunch breaks and working weekends to help cover the testing failures). Dare anyone have a slight negative word to say about their own mental health due to testing problems or overfilled work schedule, because this would create a ‘bad example’ to the rest of the team (who are definitely in the same boat). Staff turnover is ridiculously high, with a conveyer belt of new people coming down the corporate production line, that require training in standards and general SOP’s, that is the responsibility of the other lab staff, whose schedules are already overflowing with work and endless documentation. For the new members to just leave a mere few months later when they realise the state that the business is in. Don’t bother turning to management to support with training either, as they do not understand or have the capacity to run any of the standards or SOP’s themselves. Business schemes are created to ‘encourage people to bring new ideas to the business’ aka you put in extra hours, in your own free time to learn a new standard, that the management team themselves wouldn’t give a sideward glance to, in order to increase the profitability of the business and earn your OWN BONUS. Any staff that do not contribute to this ideology, do not receive a bonus, despite contributing a large portion of their life to the business and the clients over the years. The degree of understanding of the SOP’s and standards is a joke. Laboratory staff are expected to read 60+ page documents (x20) and interpret the standards for their specific projects, that are mostly adapted from the original standard. Yet senior management negatively respond to people when they are questioned on sections of the standard or the project, blaming the scientist for not knowing what they are doing (when they have never been taught it). Projects are signed off before health and safety is considered. I’ve lost track of times that projects have been ran without risk assessments completed, or health and safety guidelines highlighted when handed over to the project scientist. Aerosolised microbes and hazardous products are tested in communal areas in the building and within the labs themselves, without appropriate PPE. There are definite high-risk safety concerns with a lot of the work done here. Alongside the health and safety aspect, there is also a lack knowledge and awareness in respect to projects. For instance, many adapted or custom-made projects are signed off, without pilot studies, and scientist are left to ‘make it work’, without advice from senior management and very little information from the client when handed over. The company clearly promises the client all their resources to make their product pass standards, when in fact they just utilise all their staff’s resources until they bleed them dry. Testing procedures are certainly not accurate, and much of the raw data is not presented to clients in final reports, where they are led to believe their product has exceeded the standards and is fit for purpose, when in reality products are retested until they gain the result that they want. The image they give off on their website and job advertisements is a far cry from the reality of the company. Don’t expect a decent wage for the time you give, or any form of compensation/reward for what you do. Your mental health and confidence will suffer a major blow, to the point that they make you feel as though you are not good enough to work elsewhere. When the matter of the fact is, they are as oblivious to their own incompetence and poor treatment of their staff. People don’t leave bad jobs…they leave because of bad bosses, poor management, who don’t appreciate their value.
