Honestly, it's hard to know where to begin with this review as theres so much I can say about this company and all its problems.
The easiest place to start is with the family itself. Backland media is a family run business, which can be difficult in even the best of companies, and its turned this company into a living nightmare.
If you're a part of the family then you can get away with doing absolutely no work and nobody will bat an eyelid, where the people who dont have the Backland surname work hard to keep the business afloat so they can pay their bills. Every single member of this family is lazy, incompetent, and completely reliant on the other employees to keep the money coming in, but they’re too blinded by their own arrogance to realise this.
There has been ongoing issues with employees getting paid properly, if at all, but management dont seem to care as long as they can still live in their little “everything is perfect” bubble.
The owner of Backland Media completely believes that working for this company is a privilege and that anyone who doesn't share his blood should feel eternally grateful for the chance to be employed.
So when certain employees stopped getting paid i felt like management saw no problem with this, as they feel that the chance to work for Backland was payment enough.
This attitude extends to taking any time off, whether this be for sickness, personal problems, or even the holidays you're entitled to. The management of this company will tell you that hours are flexible and that they're very laid back, but the reality is that if you need to take any time off, for any reason, this will be held against you. You'll be made to feel like your time off was a God given gift rather than a right that every worker in this country is entitled to.
While regular employees are being judged for taking holidays, members of the family are coming and going as they please. Whether any one of them will actually turn up to work on any given day is a mystery, and it honestly seems to depend on how they feel that morning. If they do show up, then they'll be taking hour long smoke breaks, 3 hour long lunches, and random trips out to go shopping, get their hair done, take driving lessons, or whatever they feel like doing this week, so they might as well not be there at all. Luckily, the people who aren't a part of the family are there to keep this company from collapsing.
All of this has made a hostile work environment, and it's something that the family are aware of. The problem is that they seem to think that they can do no wrong and that their beaten down employees are the ones to blame. This means that the management get frustrated that they're not met with grateful grovelling smiles when they walk in every morning and are infuriated when staff are too miserable and demotivated to be able to work creatively and offer any ideas. People do their best work when they're happy, not when they're constantly berated and threatened with unemployment, but this is something that this company hasn't managed to work out yet.
If your about to interview with this company, please just do yourself a favour and dont do it. They'll try to impress you at the interview stage and you'll be promised all sorts but the reality is completely different. If you value your mental health, stay away.
