Australian Broadcasting Reviews

So many people over 40 who will never leave (barnacles) who stifle innovation and block progression for younger and more talented/skilled employees. Some workers are basically on welfare… Hard to progress and you don’t get paid what you’re worth - despite value-adding constantly. Culture of burnout among those actually doing the work (usually of 2-3 jobs worth) to make up for the barnacles who get paid more than them simply because they’ve been there so long. Way too many managers who don’t “do” anything besides meetings all day and have no time to actually manage/guide their team. Very risk-averse culture - decisions take ages to make and are often in direct opposition to innovation. Internal politics abound. We are told to ”do what’s best for the audience” but in practice, stakeholder management comes before the audience wants/needs, which is extremely disappointing and frustrating.

I do have A LOT of cons but keep in mind that I am glad I spent time there! Obvious problems at the ABC : - for me personally, I spent the majority of my contract twiddling my thumbs trying to find work to do. Some people might like that. I was bored out of my mind. I feel I delivered great stuff but I could have completed everything working two days per week. I'm back in the private sector now and it's fantastic to have something to get stuck into and be busy all the time. This was just my personal experience though, I could clearly see that others (in roles I couldn't help with) were too busy! - internal politics and silos - very hard to get stuff done and it's going to be very hard to fix this. It's obvious that projects will take three times as long and cost four times more than they should mainly due to this. Very poor decision making processes. The divisions need to work together not pursue their own agendas. Have the debate before the decision is made, make the decision and then stick to what is agreed (even if you disagree with it). Instead they make a decision and then spend years fighting over it and playing politics undermining the success of any complex project. Someone will have to make some tough calls to fix that - but you'll see failure after failure until it's fixed. - bullying - only time in my career I've ever actually seen bullying at work. Was shocked to see behaviour that would just not be tolerated in the private sector. A manager openly berating and swearing at staff members on multiple occasions was just terrible to see. I didn't raise it with HR but I was only on a temp contract and you're scared to rock the boat. - hiring process dominated by fixed term contracts - so almost all new hires seem to be on 6,12,18 months contracts whereas existing staff are permanent and unsackable. It means there is dead wood (people who obviously just aren't doing anything and haven't learnt a new skill in the past decade) who can't be sacked, whereas the fresh blood is hired on a mediocre salary on a temp contract. So new people come, gain good experience at the ABC, then 12 or 18 months down the line leave for a 50% pay rise and a permanent job elsewhere while the dead wood who have been there 20+ years and delivering little stay year after year. The ABC cuts which caused such an outrage barely made a scratch. It's ridiculous that this was headline news. Private industry regularly make redundancies. It's part of being a healthy enterprise. Just to be clear, the vast majority of ABC staff and especially those who have been around a long time are hard working and extremely valuable. When I refer to dead wood it is a small minority - but it's very, very obvious and there are millions in efficiency savings right there. - some of the management just aren't skilled enough. It was embarrassing at times. IT project managers (in charge of major projects worth millions) who could barely work a computer, manage a meeting or give a presentation, completely out of date skills sets caused so many problems. It was baffling.