The MSG Group Reviews

I am not exaggerating when I say everything. Minimum holiday, no sick pay, terrible morale, senior management(owners/dictators) are essentially bullies. You are bought in for your skill set but soon learn you are actually only there as a ego boost to a tyrannical owner and his pet younger brother. When you start it seems friendly but you soon realise everyone walks around on eggshells just waiting for the main owner to throw another crazy tantrum. HR openly say they are there just to get rid of people which is less than delightful. There is no progression and trying to get a pay rise/ bonus is near impossible. For your own sanity and self esteem do not accept a role here! I can not speak for in store work life only for Head office

The problems start from the very top. The CEO has some sort of fragile ego and is unable to delegate any decision-making power to any of the management staff across the business, which results in painfully slow decision making. The CEO is extremely reluctant to hand over any sort of responsibility, which was fine when the company started and was significantly smaller, but this is a huge company now. Nothing can happen without delegation. And yet, management seem to run around like headless chickens wondering why things take so long, as if it isn’t blindingly obvious. If any other member of staff lower than management suggests, or in fact, is completely aware of the reason as to why something is not as efficient as it could be, they are not listened to. Management see the staff as incompetent monkeys who are just in the office by sheer coincidence. There is a huge morale problem here. The way staff are treated is disrespectful at best, just plain bullying at worst. There’s a strange grey area with admin staff, on the one hand admin are micromanaged to the nth degree, but on the other hand the company do not care at all if admin staff constantly call in ‘sick’. There have been numerous admin staff, particularly in HR, who have come and gone within a couple of months due to poor treatment. The company sees the staff, particularly admin staff, as expendable, and truly do not care whether they show up or not. The one benefit in a weird, weird way is that there is a lot of camaraderie borne from employee’s joint hatred of the company, some of the managers and terrible work environment. There are clear favourites who are given extra special treatment, and on the other side of the spectrum there have been members of staff who have been hounded so badly by managers they essentially forced them out the door. Linking to the morale problem is the company’s lack of proper benefits and entitlement. Staff are paid the absolute bare minimum possible, basic holiday allowance, no sick pay (unless you qualify for statutory sick pay, but by the time you could start to claim you’ve lost out on around 3-4 days pay) so a lot of staff will come in very ill, something which is neither acknowledged or appreciated by the company. The company believes that merely working for the company IS the benefit. That you should feel privileged to be able to come into work for the bare minimum. Granted, there is an annual party which is quite a nice event, but staff who choose not to go are often scolded, as if going to a hotel with a group of people you don’t particularly care that much about is the opportunity of a lifetime and if you don’t want to go you don’t deserve benefits. I have been told to my face before, that this company party is in fact the reason we don’t have benefits. The company really believes a party once a year is a perfectly good substitute for sick pay!!!!!! Its absolutely mind-boggling how a company can be so entitled as to genuinely believe this… There is also a bit of a question mark as to whether staff will be able to keep their jobs past the two-year mark. This is so you cannot challenge your dismissal by the company, which an employee can only do if they have been with the company for 2 years. This is just insanity. While uncommon, it has happened to a few people around the office. If this doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the ethics of this company, I don’t know what else to tell you. Again, staff here; expendable. Overall, this is just an awful company. So disorganised its frustrating, especially when you are doing all you can to make the best of the position you’re in, but nothing ever changes. Some of the behaviour by managers is abhorrent and at times borderline abusive (the worst by far being the top floor of the building… watch out for the managers up there!!!!), and for goodness sake, its 2019, you need a decent culture and benefits programme in place to retain and attract employees.