Listen to your employees before you dig yourself in a deeper hole
Pros
Pros As everyone else has mentioned, the people (excluding senior management) are really whats kept me here the past 6 months. The retention team are such a great group and i've never been as close to a team in my life. This makes the recent treatment of our team all the more painful as its really awful to see those close to me suffer through such a stressfull and depressing environment. Our head of department has been our rock throughout the past few months. After the previous head of client services, the head of retention and finally our previous department manager all suddenly 'mutually decided to move on' in a short space of time, our manager has been an absolute trooper trying to motivate the team and hold things together. Our previous department head was also a highlight of my time here. He really looked after us and and got the best out the team. Like our current manager he respected us and treated us like adults while making sure we all hit our targets and did as good a job as possible in such a hard role. Im not sure which terms he left on but my beleif is all the current changes and new senior leadership might have something to do with it.
Cons
New senior management has come in and absolutely decimated client services. In the last 6 months or so, they appointed someone who seems to be on a mission to make everyone miserable. KPIs are unrealistic and earnings are tanking. The micromanagement is on another level. We are made to feel worthless and get passive aggressive emails on a regular basis. The company have a history of getting rid of entire offices and departments on a whim, and i wouldn't be suprised if retention are next. They want to cut costs and have seem to be moving in the direction on having account management manage their own retention conversations. Most of the Account managers do not want this - as they have constantly re-assigned bases (often due to other account managers leaving) that haven't had contact in years and its a very difficult job to retain clients that have had little service. The clients often have not very nice things to say about PHMG, and being screamed at by irate clients isn't something they signed up for. Throwing away such an experienced and hard working team would be a mistake. The business itself is clearly dying. With the rise of AI and most of our clients looking to cut costs - we are one of the first cuts. AI can produce a comparible product for a hugely lower cost (if not for free). Also the quality of service for most clients is shocking due to the fact account managers are stretched too thin due to having a rediculous number of accounts in their base' and always being dragged into meetings by their micromanaging heads-of. The clients dissappointment is easy to see by spending 2 minutes looking through Google reviews, BBB or an unhappy facebook group that was created by disgruntled clients. Luckily for the owner they managed a very smart exit strategy by selling half the company and turning it into an employee owned trust. The EOT is not what many expected as no one owns any shares in the business and have literally 0 say in the businesses decisions. They did however place some token EOT reps. However, they have no power and since the formation we have had one measly half hour meeting where nothing was acheived and no employee concerns or suggestions were taken on board. Oh also, they do not properly pay holiday pay. After this was raised several times to the head of client services - it was brushed off everytime and clearly isn't an important enough issue to them.