Disintergrated - Anonymous employee Virgin Active Employee Review

2.0
19 Jul 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I am struggling as it has left a sour taste... The staff were brilliant, because it takes a certain someone to swallow corporate nonsense and carry on with their job Free membership and discounts with Virgin brands

Cons

This used to be an amazing company to work for, who genuinely appreciated and valued their staff. Nearly 6 years ago after they bought Esporta, I saw the rise of VA, but then they seemed to just get greedy. It went very commercial and corporate greed seemed to set in. It was literally all about the figures. Over the course of the last 3 years, the company has disintegrated from 122 to 40 clubs, leaving huge amounts of people redundant/jobless. The chances of progression were literally swept from under your feet. TH new MD Robert Cook comes across as very untrustworthy, a sentiment shared amongst many people at ALL levels. The whole company knew about the sale of clubs po David Lloyd approx 2.5months before the announcement, yet the leadership team denied it (I guess they had too) Rumour has it they plan to sell all clubs outside of the M25 so be careful if you are planning on a carrer up North! They constantly change the "mission" and recently even changed the companies "Values" but held back on releasing the "straight up" value seeing as they were not being straight up about DL!!

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Virgin Active Response
8y
Thank you for taking the time to review us. Thank you for your hard work over the 5 years you were with us. Although you don’t seem to have had a positive experience recently, we hope there were some good things that kept you with the business so long! It’s great to hear that you enjoyed the team you worked with and benefitted from the complimentary Virgin Active membership and wider Virgin discounts. We have made some changes in the last year and this has meant a reduction in the size of the business. As a result of the sale of Clubs, all staff were allowed to transfer along with the new company. This had been strategically decided and an important step in our international strategy to focus on developing and operating sites in metropolitan and commuter hubs. We have considerable opportunities for investment and growth in the UK and a great future for our existing and new clubs. Our Senior Leadership team is fully on board with this strategy and committed to driving the business forward with our people and members at the forefront. The Values were a great new launch for us and we’re really pleased with how they’ve been received. With 6 new Virgin Values, we chose to concentrate on 3 of them at Virgin Active that resonate with our clubs the best. We feel they’re really making a difference to our people and members. Thank you again for your feedback, all the best for the future. Radha

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