Pros
The people. One thing that can make someone stick with a company longer than it deserves is the people they work with. Not leadership (which seems to be mostly made up of people failing upwards), the people at the bottom doing the grunt work. T&F has some of the most incredible and talented people you'll ever meet.
Cons
Where to start? T&F looks very different today to when I started, and the change has not been for the better. Change is inevitable in any workplace, but making poorly considered changes to things that underpin what makes us successful as a company and a great place to work is dangerous. Communication is atrocious and at an all time low. Leadership doesn't seem to value (and/or trust) staff and staff deeply mistrusts leadership. We're given prevaricating answers or no answers at all to questions that have genuine weight and deserve a transparent and honest reply. We see the same people being promoted, and the same people being overlooked. There is increasing pressure to deliver unreasonable and unsustainable targets and no recognition for staff scrambling and working beyond what is reasonable to try and deliver. When we voice legitimate concerns and raise crucial points about plans or projects or pathways that seem ill-conceived or half-baked, we're met with the vibe of "get with the program or get out". Increasingly, decisions seem to be made by people who are far removed from the areas that will experience the most negative effects if it goes wrong. The company keeps funnelling money into things we don't need, like outsourcing, and not into things we do need, like better better systems and more specialist staff. The people first aspects that T&F once so proudly supported are slowing being stripped away. The promotional pathway was removed and never replaced; our bonuses for working our arses off have been taken away; redundancies that the company did not need to make will see less staff with more work on top of work they already couldn't keep up with; and the new RTO mandate has negatively affected many. As well as being a step backwards in today's flexible world, the RTO mandate is both unhelpful and unfair. Carers, parents, people with visible and invisible disabilities, people who have moved to make a better life for themselves outside of the expensive cities where T&F hubs are located, and many more - all of these people are feeling alienated and disgruntled and stressed as they try to negotiate with leadership to be granted a remote working contract. The sour cherry on top is that all remote workers are being shut out of promotions and new roles because every job placement now dictates balanced working as a requirement. Our most successful years have been those where the majority of staff have worked remotely - how can leadership so wilfully ignore that data? We've seen so many dedicated and integral people pushed out or walk. These people were fountains of knowledge and did so much to engender trust in T&F within the scholarly communities that we engage and work with. The business risks dying a slow death by alienating and eroding what props it up. The appointment of a new CEO late last year did not instil confidence but instead heightened mistrust towards leadership. There's been no real indication over the past 10 months that she understands the industry she works in. There's something truly wrong when sitting at the top of your company is a person who doesn't seem to grasp what we are, what our values are, or what historically has made us so strong. In my years at T&F, right now is the lowest I've seen staff morale and it's heartbreaking. Many great people have one foot out the door. This will cost the company more than it bargained for if it doesn't correct its course.
