The rust is deep - Account Manager Onefeed Employee Review

Onefeed perhaps had the potential to be a great agency, but the incredibly poor leadership from the MD has resulted in a withered husk. Slowly but surely, the business has shed massive amounts of staff, clients and anything resembling a culture. Dozens of intelligent and passionate professionals have come and gone through its revolving doors over the years, and left within quick succession due to poor business decisions, culture and lack of professionalism of the owner. A cursory look on LinkedIn shows in excess of 60 staff having worked at Onefeed in the past few years (not including those who were so ashamed of their time at the company they removed all reference to having worked there). This level of turnover is obscene - and is not simply explained away by the “we have high standards” response, as nearly all ex-Onefeed employees have gone on to work for more reputable agencies and flourished in their careers. Indeed, a group of ex-Onefeeders went on to create their own agency and have absolutely eclipsed Onefeed in terms of clients, quality of service, staff training, culture and growth - even recently winning a coveted ‘The Drum’ award for their high standards. It may sound unfair to place the blame of everything solely at the feet of the MD, but you’ll notice a common theme from the other reviews here: the owner isn’t interested in actually running the business, building a culture or caring about his staff and clients or even showing basic human courtesy. In his defence, he has never run a business before and has only ever worked in previous sales roles, presumably thinking he should run a business in the same way as a high-pressure sales environment a la Glengarry Glen Ross. I believe he may want to change things, but doesn’t know how to - so he has in the past hired members of staff and told them to “fix things". However, poor judgement and an inability to accept any constructive criticism means these people either make no effective changes whatsoever or break things beyond repair (as they don't know any better). Inevitably this person brought in to fix things leaves (or is fired). I have personally witnessed this happen 3 times and it looks like it has happened again recently. This causes senior members of staff to leave due to the poor working environment and massive instability. As a result you now have a diminished workforce and poor morale. To make things worse the remaining staff are now lumbered with even more accounts. Given these unmanageable workloads, standards and performance start to slip and clients leave - with the MD on many occasions publicly berating Account Managers for this. No self respecting professional will stand for this, so they end up leaving too - with the MD claiming "good riddance". More staff leave. Desperate, the business will recruit anybody to get “bums on seats”. Thus, a new wave of junior staff are thrown in the deep end with no training given (as there's nobody to train them), assigned accounts and left to sink or swim. Sometimes they will rise to the challenge, but more often than not they will end up leaving. Then the cycle begins anew - the MD will hire someone to “fix things” and EVERY mistake made over the past year is repeated. Onefeed has been lucky to have had many members of staff with previous agency experience, but any suggestions on best practices were summarily ignored by the MD. If even a handful of recommended processes had been put in place Onefeed would be in a much different place. Staff exit interviews have all provided identical feedback. You would think after dozens of people saying the same thing you would listen.