In my experience, the culture felt very toxic and bureaucratic. The environment was consistently negative and unhealthy, especially in the way people treated and spoke to each other. As a result, employee morale was very low.
Work-life balance was inconsistent across teams. Starting work at 7/8am and continuing well into the evening (often beyond 8/9pm) was normalised just to get the work done, creating unsustainable expectations and workloads. Burnout was very common, but instead of being supported, you are expected to be more resilient and manage your time more efficiently.
Decision-making felt archaic, slow, and overly complex, with multiple unnecessary loops and hurdles. Many leaders appeared resistant to change and, in my view, unaware or misaligned with the impact this had on team productivity and employee morale. Many of the leaders (Heads of Department and above) have been at the company for decades, and have an old school approach to leading teams, and simply lack current industry expertise and modern leadership styles.
In my experience, domineering personalities and micromanagers thrived within the wider environment, allowing a small number of voices to dominate conversations and decision-making and reinforcing the overall toxicity of a workplace that felt stuck in 1990s/early-2000s norms. This made it extremely difficult to speak up or raise concerns.
I found we were constantly frozen in reactive, tactical delivery mode rather than working towards a clear strategic direction, leaving us well behind industry standards. A significant amount of time and effort was spent on administration and junior-level tasks simply to keep day-to-day operations running.
Development and learning were frequently discussed, but only in theory. In practice, I was not aware of any meaningful training or learning opportunities, aside from a single course available only to leadership at the Head of Department level and above. The company is significantly behind in this area.
