Gattaca

2.0

Mar 23, 2018

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible working, a really great, hardworking and supportive marketing and creative team that worked together well and shows encouragement at times when workloads are heavy. A great social scene, plenty of work events such as Christmas parties and horse racing. I had understanding managers when it came to time pressures and commitments of working parents - made me feel trusted and that in turn was paid back by even more hard work. This and a really close team kept me at Gattaca for a long time.

Cons

Business support functions like marketing are not valued by the majority of the business - always seen as a cost not as an essential function to help the business grow. The team always made to feel as if they were never quite doing enough, creating a huge blame culture from management down to the team. Despite EVP launches, basic suggestions for employee retention (at least on the support side) or complaints weren't listened to - career progression, lack of resource and pay were brushed aside and turned into the employee's issue. Told there were no basic inflation pay rises because we need to "work harder" and always told to prove yourself and you will get rewarded - however, this never happened. Never worked or worried so much in my life only to feel that it still wasn't good enough. Not enough resource on the team so trying to 'prove ourselves' to get anywhere within the company was constantly an issue as projects couldn't be completed efficiently because of lack of resource, changing priorities and increasing workloads. I worked with 5 different managers over the years and various different marketing executives, most left due to pay, progression or workload. Despite three reviews in a row where I told my managers that I was unhappy and wanted to know what I needed to do to progress, nothing was ever addressed. When I eventually threatened to leave, I was then offered a promotion. At the end of my employment, I felt exhausted, undervalued, demotivated and frustrated. Only since starting new employment - which ironically has more responsibility (amongst other things I wanted.) have I realised that work shouldn't make you feel like this!

Gattaca Response

It’s great to hear your positive comments about Gattaca, so thank you for taking the time to leave your review. We are really pleased that we have been able to offer flexible working for so many people across the Group and provide a great social scene for people to enjoy, particularly as we do recognise how hard people work. I am disappointed to hear that you did not feel valued as I can assure you the business greatly appreciate the hard work our group support functions do, and ensure that our Group Support functions are included in the social events and also some of the larger incentives (e.g. 6 of our Group Support team members from Whiteley went with 24 sales team members to Ibiza in 2017 as a thank you for their exceptional work). We also make sure that individuals in Group Support who have made exceptional contribution are mentioned and praised at our End of Quarter all staff events, and that our teams and individuals are recognised at both internal annual awards and external award events. We have always provided a salary review budget to be applied to Group Support and awarded this on merit and performance. If you didn’t receive a salary review in one particular year then it is likely to have been for one of two reasons; your salary was considered to be above the salary banding, or the performance didn’t warrant an increase in the year. This would have been explained to you at the time, which your feedback suggests it was. Sometimes a fresh start with a new employer can invigorate someone’s motivation for working and performance returns and it sounds like moving to a new company is what you needed and it has worked for you. We are pleased for you and wish you every luck with your current role.

It could be such a great company for all - It's a shame so much falls on deaf ears - Senior Marketing Executive Gattaca Employee Review

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