Pros
Only salary, benefits and days-off/shift possibilities. Salary is the best on the island for the roll. Get 600 euros in housing allowance the first 3 years when moving from abroad, which makes the salary really nice at least for the first three years, I get about 3000 euros NET every month. Hybrid shift and the possibility to work twilight shifts and night shifts, where I work twilight shift, which is working 14:00-01:30 7 days for a whole week, and then get a whole week off after that, and when adding paid holidays to that it will become three weeks off, which is perfect for someone like me who loves to travel, although the work week itself is mostly just sleep and work and very tough. Even when in day-shift, you will once a month have a long weekend (Saturday-Tuesday) off which also allows you to travel a bit at least to near places. But these are frankly the only things that have made it worth to stay for almost three years now.
Cons
Extremely old-fashioned, hierarchical way of organising the whole company. Extremely strict rules that you need to follow 100% and almost anything you do is getting checked and the slightest little thing you do wrong you will get told about. You need to raise almost anything to a supervisor or a team leader for permission, except for the simplest of contacts. The things we are allowed to do as normal advisors are extremely limited. Even supervisors sometimes need to raise to managers to decide how to proceed with stuff or to get permission for certain things. You are not trusted to be able to solve things by yourself, always the people higher up are expected to know better than you and you need to follow what they tell you. Even stuff that we literally always do the same way, where we know exactly what the supervisor will say because we always handle these cases the same way, we have to raise and ask permission from the supervisor before proceeding, adding unnecessary extra delay to customer contacts. In my department now we have permission to at least arrange our own breaks within the group, but before, and still for more busier departments, we need to ask for permission for breaks. Closing the chat or phone line even if just for a few minutes is seen as the uttermost disaster. It's all about maximising the profit. It doesn't matter how many billions the Coates have, it's all about making more, and more, and more money. The wellbeing of employees comes last. We are also supposed to be able to handle three chats constantly AND be able to multitask with leaving notes, raising to Sups or team leaders, and other stuff at the same time during the busiest times. I understand that we need to multitask some, and that there will be stress in this sort of work regardless, but come on, the amount of things we are expected to do at the same time and still do them 100% correctly and im accordance with all those strict rules we have, are ridiculous. Sometimes we are even alone and are expected to cover chat and phone at the same time. Even in the 12 hour day twilight shift, we only get like two 15 min breaks and one 30 min lunch break per day. In the 8 hour day day-shift it was two 10 min breaks and one 30 min lunch break, so there's hardly any difference at all. As I am in one of the calmer departments, sometimes it can be really quiet as well, but during the busiest times it can get extremely much even for us. Also, any feedback we give appear to not be cared about at all. When we changed our software for chats, we were asked for feedback regarding the new software. It was mainly negative feedback about the new tool which was much more complicated to use and way harder to navigate than what we were using before which was super-easy to use - and all of this, as it seems, so that management can more easily keep all information at one place. One of the few things that people gave GOOD feedback about was the fact that we now had 120 seconds to accept a chat instead of the previous 30 seconds, decreasing stress a lot actually as 120 seconds was generally enough to leave a note and closing a previous case completely. Guess what one of the only things they changed was? They changed the 120 seconds back to 30 seconds to accept a chat. Yup. You heard that right. One of the only things we advisors liked about the new software was one of the very few things they changed. Once again, all about the customers and maximising profits, no care whatsoever for us advisors and our wellbeing. I don't know how many new advisors have left just within a few months after starting in our department, and okay I know people from my country tend to be a bit weaker when it comes to work than from other countries which still have this sort of old-fashioned work culture to a larger extent, but regardless, when this many advisors quit regularly, it might be time to look over and see WHY that is, and do something about it, because surely it must be better to keep your current employees longer instead of continuously employing new ones. And yes I know, unfortunately they can do this because it is very easy to find new employees. There are new ones coming into training all the time. But isn't it also cheaper for the company to keep their current employees rather than employing new ones? I guess not to rhe point that they find it worth changing their toxic work culture. They are also very reluctant to change anything at all, really. Or it takes extremely long time for anything to change, probably also because of the hierarchical system where all needs to be raised to someone above them etc. Rotas for instance is one of those things, that shouldn't even be hard to fix, but still they don't. Lots of people on the early shifts but most often way too few on the late shifts, when we are at our busiest normally. This leads to us at Twilight shift to be forced to handle the lines alone for hours and we are only three, and when you have colleagues who regularly call in sick more or less at least once every work week - which the company is not allowed to question due to the law not allowing to question when someone's called in sick - often leads to one of us needing to cover chat alone and the other one phone alone until the night shift is on. This would be so easily changed by just putting a few more people from day shift until a little later like we even used to have before. Early shifts are usually even really calm so we don't even need that many people early in the morning. It makes no sense whatsoever. Even small things we have provided feedback about such as templates not containing sufficient information, strange wording or words we usually use not being included in the dictionary, have not been changed for several years. They tell us like yeah, that's very valid feedback and tell us they will raise it but nothing ever happens. As for WFH it is good we at least have the opportunity to work from home a few days a week, but they can literally call you at anytime even shortly before you are supposed to start and force you to come in to the office just because someone's called in sick or whatever and they need someone to cover the phone because as mentioned before, closing the lines even for just a little bit is the most horrible thing that can happen in the eyes of the management. Also no one dares to question anyone above them. Not even supervisors dare to question management's decisions. I haven't worked at any other iGaming company in Malta - yet - but looking at other companies and people who work for other companies, I cannot help but feel how fun it often looks and what a completely different atmosphere there seems to be there. Much more laud-back, homely, friendly, many more events, people go out and hang out and have fun after work or during their days off/holidays. Here it's nothing of that. Sure, they do have a few social events sometimes, but I went once and it was an extremely stiff atmosphere. Other events also seem to be very stiff. And sure, some people do go to after-works and stuff but it's generally the same members if so and not many appear to hang out outside their workplace. Sure people talk to each other in the office, some people are really nice too, but it's just very stiff in general there as well. It's just not a workplace that I feel excited to come to, rather the other way around. It was a bit better during covid when we did not have the phone atm and we had many more WFH shifts, or even only WFH for a while. But that's mostly only because we didn't have to come to that stiff atmosphere in the office very often, did not feel surveyed by TLs/Sups/Managers at all times, and did not have to sit in customer contacts for the whole day as we could be asked to do tasks or sit on e-mails only for a while, which was nice especially if you had been on an extremely stressful 3 chats constantly for a few hours. Now it's customer contacts constantly for the whole shift. And the breaks are way too short to be able to calm down and clear your head in between. Many ways of doing things in the workplace, not just the hierarchical structures, extremely strict rules and stiff atmosphere but also some of the methods used also feel like really outdated. Like recording things in Excel spreadsheets. I could have even forgotten something to write here but all in all it's just not a very nice workplace to come to and the only things that have made it worth to stay so far are as mentioned the salary, the shifts and days-off/holidays, and the benefits, but it's not really the kind of workplace I really want to work in which would be somewhere a lot more modern with a homely, friendly feeling, laidback atmosphere and especially no hierarchical structures and no strict rules and with a lot more freedom to act on your own to solve problems and to be creative and feel trusted to be able to deal with and solve things on your own in the best possible way. And where the wellbeing, stress levels, and feedback of and from employees even if just advisors, are taking seriously and not about maximising profits only when you already are making billions. Some procedures we do towards our customers also feel very suspicious or wrong, but that's another story.