Lots.
Firstly, it is worth pointing out that the majority of what makes PR an unpleasant place to work stems from the top of the management structure.
The way the management handles interactions with employees is nothing short of embarrassingly unprofessional. People upon approaching the managing director are greeted with completely unnecessary and downright malicious scalding for even daring to ask perfectly reasonable questions, this is jokingly apologised for ahead of time, with the statement "if I'm grumpy its because I'm really busy" which is not a justifiable reason to belittle people in front of the whole team.
The manging director is in charge of approving holidays and when carrying out this task will openly sound out to the office that they want people to stop booking holiday.
People who call in sick are not treated with sympathy, and their personal information is not kept confidential, instead the reason for their absence voiced to the whole office.
People who have the ability to work from home, when they are ill, may sometimes request to work from home whilst ill instead of coming to the office, this is also behaviour which is berated by the senior management.
Recently a member of the team has had a few days off on different occasions due to illness and the senior manager handled this with no sensitivity at all and even made a point of being passive aggressive in making a comment to the person in front of the whole office which made the individual very upset.
At the start of the first lockdown, the management was reluctant to let any one work from home and initially made even those who were not comfortable doing it, come to the office. Although they did allow working from home, the professional and intelligent work force was made to feel distrusted as the management would be "watching people's eyes" during online meetings and not allowing people to have their cameras turned off.
The distrust of the work force and the opinion that they are not working fast enough is also something that is voiced in the office, which makes the team, who are always working extremely hard, feel undervalued and often upset.
The aggressive and unacceptable behaviour of the senior management has brought members of the team to tears and continues to be the largest cause of the drastic and terrible decline in office morale.
The review team, is set unachievable goals daily and made to feel awful every day for not being able to keep on top of the always increasing workload. There are no bonuses in place or extra incentives, the team extremely rarely are told that they are appreciated for this hard work. Next to nothing has been done to make the workload more manageable and the hiring of new team members is only ever done as a reactionary measure and not ahead of time.
The whole office is made to feel extremely uncomfortable throughout the day when they have to witness the open berating of certain members of the team, most notably the operations manager who is belittled all day by a senior manager and constantly told in front of the whole office, how bad of a job they are doing. it is common place for members of the team, when the MD leaves the office, to ask the ops manager if they are okay as the team is constantly worried for their mental health, something which the senior management does not seem to care for.
It is not only face to face criticisms of members of the team that are an issue, but also insults directed at certain members, by the senior management, to the whole office whilst they are not there. This makes the team constantly nervous as to whether they are also being criticised openly.
There is no HR rep or team who can handle these things, and no proper system in place to handle complaints of any nature.
There are calls which the senior management have which the team should not be privy to that are held over online meeting rooms where salaries and issues with members of the team are discussed for the office to hear, with no thought for professionalism and confidentiality.
The senior management's reaction to negative feedback such as reviews online is not to address what has been criticised, but to insist that the team post positive reviews to balance it out. This is something that the team does not feel comfortable with and will not do.
The toxic environment stemming mostly from senior management's actions and inability to control their unprofessional behaviour has turned what could be one of the best places to work into a place that will sadly start to experience staff turnover and more negative feedback as morale continues to get worse.
