Areen Design Reviews

Shouty directors, bullying managers, the blame culture, high turnover of staff. There is no real career development at this company.

I’m disappointed to have to write this review. I accepted a position to start on 6th of Jan as an Associate Project/Package Manager as part of the project management team. The role was initially offered as a 6 month FTC but supposedly as I was such a good fit the offer was amended to a permanent position in the interest of retaining me. I handed in my notice in my current position as I’d accepted the offer and signed the contract ready to hand over on my first day as they’d asked me to. However 2 weeks before Christmas I received an email stating that the offer was withdrawn “due to an internal review of roles within the department”. Which struck me as odd because they’d made out that they were in desperate need of filling this position and in any case the logical approach would be to conduct such reviews prior to creating a role and hiring for it. Having applied for this position through a recruiter I informed her of the sudden change much to her surprise. To add insult to injury I then found the very same position advertised via a different agency dated to the exact same date as the withdrawal offer letter. The company had not in any case engaged with either myself or my recruiter in connection with the decisions they’d made, she had unfortunately discovered all of this via me, which I can only imagine how undermined in her position that made her feel. Suffice to say the Project Manager hiring for this position has completely disengaged with us and has refused by way of ignoring us to give answers to our reasonable questions, calls and many emails. As HR was interim in the event of the member of HR we were dealing with very unexpectedly leaving the organisation, HR appear to have washed their hands of this situation also. The handling of the situation has been dreadful to say the least. The lack of integrity and professionalism has been astounding and I would highly recommend that any prospective applicants seriously consider joining this team as it is clear that they are unprofessional, indecisive and flippant regarding their new hires/employees. The impact that this has had on me with respect to ensuring I maintain employment hasn’t at all been considered. It was very difficult to have the rug pulled from under my feet so close to Christmas; a time I would struggle with getting a new job in place by the new year. The team has not had the decency to afford me the opportunity to ask the reasonable questions I had concerning what had changed. The lack of regard for the impact this would have is a reflection of the attitude this company has to its staff. I know this isn’t a referencing issue as I do not have bad references and in any case I hadn’t yet given them contacts for references as I hadn’t yet been asked. I’ve accepted that I will never know what changed as the Project Manager and HR continue to refuse to engage with us, so in place of that I leave this honest review for you to decide whether it’s a team you will risk joining.