Control Risks Reviews

3.6

72% would recommend to a friend

(610 total reviews)
avatar

Nick Allan

77% approve of CEO

51% positive business outlook

Control Risks has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 610 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Control Risks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management and consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

610 reviews
1.0
3 Feb 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good benefits, including private healthcare - Everyone is a similar age, so colleagues can become great friends. - You will have an immense appreciation for the job you get after you leave.

Cons

Working in threat intelligence there feels like you're back at secondary school. Firstly, all of your work gets marked out of 10 in an opaque contradictory process. Second, the "management" choose a select few to join their clique and put on the non-transparent path to promotion. The management have no experience in managing people and are out of their depth. They are haemorrhaging employees - 11 have left in the last year in a team of about 26. The "Researcher" position is constantly advertised on LinkedIn as they are desperate to backfill for the people they've lost. Sometimes they held sessions to chat about how things were going and areas for improvement. You quickly realised that anyone who provided constructive feedback would be punished with bad scores or mean comments being made about them amongst management. I still cannot believe some of the comments I heard from them about junior colleagues. The only way to survive is to keep your head down, stay "in" with the cliquey management and definitely don't be honest if anyone asks you for feedback on how you find the process. Aside from the toxic environment, the work is interesting for the first few months and most of the people are great. After a while, you hit a ceiling for the OSINT/ intelligence skills you can gain and then the only direction is to take on more responsibility in admin, recruitment or training new starters. The work is dogged in technicalities with every meeting introducing new guidance that will be scrapped the next week. Also, the salary is not enough to survive comfortably in London - salt in the wound when the management bragged about how much money threat intel brings into the firm.

2.0
10 Aug 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Global network of offices, attracts smart people from diverse backgrounds at the junior and mid level. Some real capabilities in a few areas of the business (security mainly). If you like binge drinking with your colleagues, this place is for you.

Cons

As a business it sells a brand that clients can trust when they most need support - CR claims they will give you experienced consultants, some of the best on the market. In real life that's far from true and as a manager I had to deliver on that brand promise, while extracting maximum leverage from people with zero experience, because we did not want to pay for the real deal. We tried so hard but always had a weird feeling that it was more about putting on a show than actually giving clients access to real experts. It worked out most of the time, but if clients really knew what happens in the "kitchen", many would walk away or ask to pay half the price. On a similar note the company's use of the word "expert" is abusive. They take someone with superficial knowledge and good presentation skills and here you go he is a "Control Risks expert" on something. The company maybe has 100 real experts globally. Out of 2,000 employees. You won't see them often because most of them want to leave anyways. The company has a really strong culture and it prides itself of being unique, doing things right, honest, etc...Actually that is only the case when it serves senior management. I've seen some very unethical career and pay management decisions that were not only condoned but supported by the top brass. It's generally around the idea of "give them the absolute least possible we can, they'll leave, we will find new bodies to suck their life out. " So if you ever want to be failry rewarded for your work and committement: Walk Away! Control Risks will give you experience but never a fair deal. Unless you are a white british ex military or, more recently part of the happy few high power female group crushing every body else in the name of "diversity" (it's not).

1.0
18 Jul 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are no pros for here

Cons

1. From day 1 I was lied to by my own team because they knew if they told me I would have left. 2. Management is the most unorganised I've come across in all my work experience. 3. The team and company are very segregated in terms of sticking to their teams; very difficult to feel included unless you're a middle-aged white person. 4. Tonnes of bias and double standards when it came to designating workload among the team 5. Unrealistic expectations when you're new. 6. Speaks a lot about diversity but that isn't the reality. 7. HR don't help/push blame. 8. When I left, only 1 new person reached out to me - NO ONE else in the entire team did. I don't know why I'm even surprised at this. 9. Even the collection of my equipment was badly handled - my home address was shared with people who didn't need it so there is clearly no regard or confidentiality for people's personal information. 10. Micro-managed! Goodness me it was bad. My manager chased me around the office a few times, this was such a red flag.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 610 Reviews

Glassdoor has 763 Control Risks reviews submitted anonymously by Control Risks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Control Risks is right for you.