No reason to stay except for the people - Test Analyst HBF Employee Review

2.0
Nov 19, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people you work with make this place worthwhile. Because of various management flaws often staff are left supporting each other. This does mean that you become very close to your colleagues and most people really dont want to leave because it will make it harder for your friends. Overarching goals and intended business culture is well intentional. Honestly believe in trying to do the best thing for the members, even if often is poorly executed. Great place if you are a contractor as most business policies like Personal Preformance Development Plans, KPIS and wage restrictions don't apply to you.

Cons

Wierd disjointed business areas. Some micro manage and have archaic policies and processes that hamper staff doing anything. Other areas have next to no support, no direction and multiple direct reports with no one knowing who is responsible for what. Pay is substantially below market unless you are a contractor or department manager. Have had my manager tell me and other staff openly on the floor that I would be better of quitting and come back as a contractor so I could get paid more. Performance plans and kpis set based on your job title irrelevant of what area you work in. Some are things as an individual I have no ability to achieve or influence. They champion learning and upskilling which I have done managed to get on iccasion. However most staff never get to. Even if you set policies up for providing learning like access to LinkedIn/paying for certifications etc there's no point if your staff are covering 3x people worth of workload and often working many hours extra unpaid just to get the absolutely critical items completed. We have our managers tell us we need to take ownership for our own learning and development and should study on our own time after work and during lunch breaks. Many staff don't actually take lunch breaks as meetings are scheduled during them or just due to the general workload. Most staff are working a lot of additional unpaid hours and between that and any personal responsibility like children, study etc it is not possible to upskill on your own time. Additionally often staff have learnt additional skills however miss out on job opportunities due to no experience and instead external staff are hired that have no existing knowledge of the business and often dont have the abilities they said they had in the interview. Which leaves the remaining underpaid staff inevitably working even harder while a contractor is being paid significantly more to do less work. WFH and OHS policies exist on paper and only when it is beneficial for management to use against staff. Hotdesking and lack of seats, expected to tack a laptop home every day but come to the office everyday. Some areas encourage you to do most days wfh as means they don't need to pay for more seating etc. Other areas refuse to let staff wfh unless something like covid lockdown happens. While there are OHS policies they are not actioned. Many of the sit stand desks are broken, chairs are broken and unable to be adjusted, every other desk has reems of paper under the monitors as we dont have set desks we can't get monitor risers. They champion new technology and trying to improve ways of working and empower people. But often this leads to discussions about best way to do that works perfectly for every single area of the business. And when a solution can't be found they pick what ever flavour of the month the most influential manager decides. This leads to change fatigue and staff eventually just giving up on trying to improve anything. Cyber security operate with a restriction mentality in that we restrict everything unless enough people complain they can't do their job. If it mildly hampers everyone we are told to just accept it. Staff often have to fund work around to use the programs they are actually told to use due to the disjointed approach between cyber and technology.

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5.0
Nov 15, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Great place to work and friendly management

Cons

Not enough hours to make it full time

4.0
Mar 18, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Large array of projects to choose from

Cons

Difficult to implement larger projects

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