Xe - A sinking ship

2.0

Jun 1, 2019

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

Generous pay, holiday and benefits package A relaxed culture, for those in middle ranking or lower roles not a lot is expected of you Good hours for the industry, you can turn up and leave on time. A christmas and summer party Some fruit

Cons

Once at the forefront of the international payments space (as HiFX) unfortunately xe sat on their hands for far too long and let the competition leave them for dead. They are a bit like blockbuster video and now to all intents and purposes are obsolete. The atmosphere there very much reflects this, everyone knows it including senior management who continue to simply chuck money at the problem when it is already far too late do anything about it. If you're a consumer you would simply use transferwise, its better and cheaper. If you're business you'd use a specialist corporate broker. Xe's offering is oudated and easily replicated, they place to much emphasis on the amount of visitors to their site which simply gives you exchange rate information, this is not unique and can be obtained anywhere. Anybody who uses Xe for information will generally just go and trade elsewhere anyway, they failed to grasp the opportunity about 5 years ago when they still had time to do something with it. As a place to work its ok, you'd expect to be able to park there but you cant. The office is cramped and a bit soulless. There are some good people and also a lot of people way out of their depth. Xe tend to take the cheaper option when it comes to everything which is frustrating and it shows throughout the business from the office through to recruitment of senior staff. If you really want to know what its like to work here though, you simply need do one thing. Read through some of the responses to reviews on here from the senior management. They are condescending and arrogant, they somehow feel the way to respond to genuine and constructive feedback from staff given in a genuinely confidential manner, is to engage in some sort of tit-for-tat points scoring exercise almost mocking some of the feedback given and trying to belittle the author. They hide behind a staff survey which is just an exercise in confirmation bias to argue against genuine feedback. The staff survey is barely confidential and set up in away that they get the answers they want. Glassdoor is anonymous, so the senor management would do well to take take the feedback left seriously, rather than just trying to score points and make wise cracks at the expense of their staff, it really does show a lack of skill and class and is indicative of the senior management as a whole.

Xe Response

Firstly, I’d like to apologise that some of our responses have been interpreted as you describe. That was not our intentions at all, so it’s a shame we have missed the mark for you. Looking through our responses, there appear to be no more comments offering a different point of view (which is perhaps what you have interpreted as defensive or arrogant) as there are comments where we have accepted the feedback and criticism - in many cases not just accepting but agreeing with the author that change is needed. I make this point not to be defensive or arrogant, but to offer a balanced response to your view and highlight the challenge we all face when communicating via sites such as Glassdoor. So, in the spirit of balance, I’d like to respond to some of your comments if I may. Parking. I couldn’t agree more! I wish we all had our own parking space onsite every day. Our landlord allocates us parking spaces based on our office size. There is no option to ‘buy’ more spaces onsite. So, we do the next best thing and we rent some spaces a five-minute walk from the office. This isn’t a perfect solution for anyone, I understand that. Our Your Opinion Matters staff survey. We use an external provider named Culture Amp. Though we can choose what questions to ask, we take their advice when doing so. For transparency, the questions ask the responder to either strongly/agree or strongly/disagree with specific statements. The statements include ones such as “I would recommend Xe as a great place to work” and “I feel my contributions are recognised and valued”. These, along with the other 26 questions, are designed to amplify the voice of our employees. How they choose to answer them is entirely up to them. Of course we would love for everything to be perfect here, but the reality of today’s workplace is it is never perfect for everyone. So, our ambition is to make it better. As for confidentiality, you can read more about the confidential nature of the survey on Culture Amp’s site. We have no interest in finding out who says what, no matter the platform used to voice views. One of the challenges with the feedback left on Glassdoor, is it could be one person leaving multiple reviews hiding behind several email addresses. So, it is difficult for us to be certain if it is one person who sees ‘being close to Greggs and the tip’ as the best thing about working at Xe or a group of people. Whatever the case may be, we genuinely want to hear from people and welcome all questions, suggestions, or feedback. So, thank you for taking the time to leave a review. If you would like the opportunity to discuss any ideas you might have for making Xe a better place to work and a better place for our customers to transfer money, please do find a way of letting us know. You’re more than welcome to use the anonymous red boxes around the office, or you can contact me by emailing me directly or calling me on ‪+44 (0)1753 75 17 78‬. Richard Evans

Xe

A sinking ship - Anonymous employee Xe Employee Review

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