Pros
None whatsoever. Only thing I can say is that I met a lot of great coworkers but really you would get that in any company, especially one like XLN. After All the phenomenon of siblings becoming closer and united when faced with Dictatorial and emotionally abusive parent is well known. Cons (I'm starting my cons here as I have 1000 characters too many according to glassdoor) Before i start i must say i only feel disgusted with the company mostly because of how they have treated my fellow employees rather than myself.so don't think I'm one of the hard done by people that got the sack. Far from it Seems that i was lucky enough to get out with just a touch of sexual harassment and complete incompetence of HR department, yet i think these things must be said so that anyone wanting to join thinks carefully. So few things that come to my mind: • prison- the fact that you are not allowed your mobile phone on you like a teenager in school. To the point that they purchased lockers for their teams to try and force them to leave their phones there. At the time they said it is to be compliant with regulations, however finance department somehow didn't seem to have to comply! LOL Mostly this is up to the team leader and how much of a brown noser they are, as some were ok with phones being out, however I've heard its gotten worse- you could be put on disciplinary if you don't obey. Must add that this does not apply to finance, IT, marketing departments as funny enough they are considered to be exempt from a lot of company policy enforcements. • Bradford factor - the most ridiculous HR system that penalises employees for being ill. god forbid your too ill or for too long of a time ! they will put you on disciplinary which then according to company's policy prevents you from being promoted and can even be used to fire you if that suits their agenda. According to xln you can only have a sickday up to a score of 64! • if you don't quite fit in and don't act like a sheep- XLN with help of HR department WILL find a way to get rid of you even if you're excellent at your job, if you're too self aware or value yourself or your sanity over the company's interests or just are sick of them not valuing you. If XLN need to get rid of you they will go to extents to make up new policys that you are supposedly violating or all of a sudden your Bradford factor is too high!
Cons
• you must never speak ill of them, even on your own time even if it's true. Be Careful of befriending the office snitch on any social sites as there are many of those brown nosers in xln, then next thing you know youre being wronfuly dismissed with a hint of homofobia for only privately venting on your social network after a bad day at work. ( this particular person never mentioned XLN particularly in their post and they had two jobs yet still they found it as grounds to fire them. Must be that Too many people liked it LOL) • Management styles are so different that its actually unbelievable. Some teamleaders don't care what you do as long as the 'targets' are met (for most departments they are unachievable) then others walk the floor every 10 minutes starring into your screen making sure you're occupied. •bonuses- in XLN hr department is very clear about them it is under departments discretion meaning that if they take it away you cant really do anything so don't be fooled if that's what their getting you interested with. And don't get me wrong theres nothing wrong with that until they promise you a certain commission at the start of the month and then after you've worked your butt off they say no your getting 100£ instead of 500 or even nothing at all . Lets make everyone really motivated and then just not pay them what was promised. A whole department wanted to walk out because of this, do you think they cared, nope One of the top dogs even called some of them idiots and said if they don't like it there's the door! They have absolutely no integrity or respect toward and individual. they will always promise you and assure you that they are interested in you reaching bonus however if you get too good at it you will see it shrink, they will ensure that it gets harder for you to reach it. • Abuse of power and intimidation-fear based leadership. They seem to love mangers that have loudest voices even though they don't say many smart things,embarrassing people in front of their peers, putting pressure on team leaders to make sure to achieve their Unachievable targets. All this leadership is good for is staring at young female employees behind or even start up flings/ one night stands with their employees and as long as you are at the managerial level no policies apply to you, you can come and go as you please. That brings me to •Sexual harassment- starting from employees that have been inappropriately talked to in work gatherings by top dogs who are under influence most of the time and afterwards paid nice sums to keep quite ending with team leaders asking inappropriate questions in workplace, being masagonistic. • Favouritism - when XLN hire within the business, agents that are more favourable to the manager of even a family member or friend are very often chosen over more suitable, experienced agents. Actual words- "they were just more lucky than you " were used when letting a more experienced and most suitable agent know about not succeeding to get managerial position. So don't count on that promotion just yet, there might be someone already chosen for the position before the interviews start! • Homophobia- After finding email correspondence between two agents that were of insulting and homophobic nature towards their team leader company did nothing. Seem that they only penalise employees that do something displeasing to them but if it's amongst employees they put little to no effort to protect people's human rights or maybe their top managers are homophobic judging by their religion that would be equally as likely. • And least but not last thing that I find completely ridiculous is the complaint/ grievance/ internal investigation Process, as they appoint one of the managers to investigate as if anyone paid by the company , working with employees on daily basis could EVER be objective enough to decide if employee has been hard done by,harassed or discriminated against. Now as any Company would, the response to all mentioned above they would say that most of the above things were never reported to HR which is why nothing has been done about them. But i can say one thing about that- if your HR deprtment is completely secluded from everyone in the company and only is used as a disciplinary measure, no employee would ever feel safe and protected enough to go and raise any issues!! Basically if you start seeing HR that means trouble for you most of the time. So my sincere advice to you is not to join them as nothing good will come of it apart from being used to the point of burning out and when you do that will be used against you. Of course it's a different story if your joining marketing , finance, HR department but then also be prepared to do a lot of brown nosing of all these coked out noses and you should be fine!