Public ethos not lived internally - Anonymous employee LHH Employee Review

2.0
Mar 23, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- High degree of autonomy. You’re trusted to shape your work, approach, and client relationships. - Flexibility and remote working. The ability to work from anywhere is a genuine advantage and supports a modern way of operating. - Meaningful client impact. The work itself has real value, and clients often benefit significantly from the expertise and solutions delivered. - Competitive benefits package. The overall benefits offering is strong and compares well within the industry. - Relationships on the ground with peers is supportive, enabling and close-knit

Cons

- External thought leadership isn’t reflected internally. The organisation promotes progressive ideas publicly but does not model these practices within its own culture or ways of working. - Sales-first culture at the expense of people. Decisions consistently prioritise commercial targets over employee wellbeing, development, and sustainable delivery. - Work–life balance is extremely poor. Burnout is widespread and, even when raised, is minimised or left unaddressed. Expectations are often unrealistic and unsustainable. - Client delivery risk due to single‑point dependency. Key accounts are held by one or two individuals with no meaningful team structure or contingency. When those individuals take leave, clients are exposed and internal pressure escalates. - Low psychological safety. Leadership appears unaware of their role in shaping a healthy culture, and difficult issues are often avoided rather than addressed. - Significant gap between espoused values and lived behaviours. Leadership frequently says the right things publicly (e.g. LinkedIn) but act internally in ways that contradict the stated values, which erodes trust, respect and compassion. - Toxic leadership behaviours go unchallenged. Individuals who display harmful, volatile or micromanaging behaviours are often rewarded or protected, creating a culture where issues are normalised rather than resolved. - Employees who surface issues are frequently ignored, sidelined, or subtly labelled as “the problem,” which creates a culture of silence rather than learning or improvement. - Hierarchical - Decision‑making is concentrated at the top, with limited genuine empowerment which stifles innovation and honest dialogue. - Weak internal change management capability. Despite advising clients on change, internal changes are poorly planned, poorly communicated, and inconsistently executed. - Redeployment is treated as a client-facing narrative, not an internal practice. When redundancies occur, there is little genuine effort to explore meaningful redeployment options for affected employees. - Organisational tenure is often used as a proxy for expertise. Long service is frequently positioned as deep capability, even in areas that have been underinvested in or lack genuine experience or are net new to the business. This creates gaps in quality, decision‑making, and credibility.

Explore other reviews about LHH

5.0
Jun 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible hours. High client volume.

Cons

None I can think of right now.

1.0
Jun 5, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

None to speak of really

Cons

Exploitative WFH culture that weaponizes visibility, and protects middle management even when their behavior is full on destructive which fuels a moral hazard issue whereby bad leaders can put on “face” and feel invincible. Unusually long “meetings” of managers fanning their superiority and belittling you, or focusing on short sighted optics. Members of my team routinely compared their one-on-one interactions in an effort to make sense of concerning behavior. Recruiting, many sales regions and pricing are clown cars of bad management. Don’t expect fair compensation or investment in any capacity regardless of how well you perform or what they have promised. Being a high performer does not change that - they simply learn to game you. These issues are so deeply entrenched due to moral hazard that they’re baked into the culture. Echoing others: “You will need therapy during and after ” but they will not pay you enough to afford it. They manage by micromanagement and fear. “Even if you do a great job if you are not a favorite you will have a difficult time here. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing your job if you are not accepted, however I think that’s their strategy,” said another and to add to that, credit for your work if arduous will go to someone else, and they will leave you with crumbs of recognition for work that required no business school degree to double down on hiding what you had to offer. A senior sales lead who generated boatloads in revenue before departing described her experience in meetings as being treated like, “Little girl, go sit in the corner.” That captures the dynamic precisely. I felt seen hearing that.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All