What is paid time off like at Kura?

Pros

They seem to take on anybody

Cons

Where do i start never able to get in touch with HR or Payroll to find out what your pay is gonna be and when holidays and time off are frowned upon, training is THE WORST having spent 12 weeks overall from training and going into Core feeling still clueless because there's that much unidirectional pressure. Simply not a happy environment and bad for your mental health. I have chosen to be honest in this review as i felt i did more than i needed to to address this with management and as a grassroots ambassador nothing was done until i had put in my notice to leave. Hoping that my conversation with operations on my departure makes a difference to stop others going through what many others have.

Advice to Management

Stop putting unnecessary pressure on employees with the need for your own number crunching figures realise that employees and their opinions matter they're not just a number Kura run the risk of loosing good people by treating them very unfairly and offer very little support

Pros

Can be easy work once you know what you're doing Friendly colleagues Two 15 minute and 1 30 minute break a day Opportunities for overtime if you wanted

Cons

Customer complaints. You will be required to hit KPI's and they won't be happy if you don't, although you can get away with a lot. Hard to book time off Not a lot of holidays Low pay Sometimes hard to get good shift patterns You have a meeting if you're off sick for just 3 days in a whole year Holidays need to be booked in advance and a lot of days are already taken Long hours Sometimes takes ages for things to get done Doesn't give you enough time to spend life how you want to be spending your time Working for the man, rather than being your own boss.

Advice to Management

Give commission as an incentive for KPI's

Pros

The people and weekends off

Cons

The contract and the managers

Pros

The interview was very easy and a quick turnaround. I’m hindsight, this was probably the first red flag. When I was offered the position over the phone, the person said to me “I was just going through some interviews and found yours in the pile, and we we would love to offer you a position”. Which to me indicted that there was no good process in place for recruitment such as sifting applicants and no real care taken in finding valuable talent. The training was quite enjoyable and laid back, we would often get to leave early on certain days though-out the weeks of training. I joined a call once with the CEO of Kura, Brian Bannatyne, who seemed nice a nice guy, he said the right things and allowed people to ask him questions. But things like culture, relationships and staff wellbeing are things that are swept under the carpet.

Cons

Severe micro-management. I was quite amazed at how micro-managed I was even working from home - clearly a lot of Kuras budget went into training managers in this area. Being hounded constantly is stressful and doesn’t create motivated staff. This management style was verging on bullying at some points in my opinion. I once had to leave promptly one day while working from home. I notified my line manager that I was having to clock off. Then, a completely different manager proceeded to text me, where I responded and explained the situation. She then decided to call my phone, baring in mind I had had to call an ambulance relating to the family emerald from my mobile and had to keep the line open in case they called me back. She found it more important to find out when I could be clocking back in. Completely disrespectful and I still think about how ridiculous this was. No opportunity to build relationships with other colleagues. Was on the phones all day back-to-back (with breaks from lunch), but I left the company not knowing what anyone in my my team even looked like, including my manager. This caused my mental health to be be really poor as some points working for Kura, amongst other things. There is quite frankly not enough agents to deal with the volume of calls, leading to angry customers and completely burnt out staff. Managers avoided helping dealing with difficult calls, point-blank refusing call transfers and complaints to be raised. With my mental health feeling really low, I was burnt out and NEEDED some time off to relax. This was impossible. I had to threaten going to HR to get 1 WEEK (5 working days) of leave approved, to then be contacted by an operations manager who kindly approved my leave. I definitely could have done with longer than a week. Again, the leave initially won’t have been approved due to issues within the company in terms of high call volumes and not enough advisors.

Advice to Management

There is so many areas that management need to reflect on and make serious improvements. I think back to my time working here and how awful it made my well-being and feel genuinely sorry for people who are currently working in roles which were similar to mine. Management need to think about their staff. I think an anonymous survey for employees to compete might be a good place to start to find out how people really feel. But, I really wouldn’t be confident that the company would act much on the feedback and make positive change.