Horrible Culture and Terrible Leader - Anonymous employee Deskpro Employee Review

This is a difficult review to read, both because the reviewer clearly left Deskpro with such a negative experience but also because there seems to have been such a misunderstanding of our company culture. We try very hard to hire people that are going to work well at Deskpro, accepting that we might not be the right company for everyone, and it's disappointing when we get that as wrong as we did in this case. In regards to Covid, this was clearly a sudden shock that affected a lot of companies and how they work. We had always been a hybrid working environment before covid with about half our company fully remote so were able to adjust reasonably quickly. With covid accelerating we completly closed the office before the government guidance required this; we also paid all employees a £1,000 "bonus" to help them with any unanticipated costs during what was a difficult time for everyone. We did not furlough anyone and we continued to hire. When the situation changed, we wanted to resume our in-office work where possible - so invested in a range of health and safety measures to reduce any transmission risk as far as possible; we also made return to the office optional, with a number of employees choosing to remain WFH for the time being or moving to work fully remote. During the peak covid period we played around with various tools to try and retain a feeling of connectivness as a team, one of these is what I believe this review mentions and was an alternative to slack that provided a sense of visual presence. As a normally very collaborative office, we wanted to try and create a feel of an 'office at home' with the same ability to quickly chat with someone when you have a quick question. As a tech company, we always want to trial any solutions that could make our team's working environment better. We never wanted the team to feel like they were being tracked and the tool was certainly never used to track people (it logs no data or has any tracking functionality at all). The tool didn't get a huge amount of uptake and there was a general preference to use Zoom so we phased its use out completely. It is sad to read that someone felt that taking initiative is discouraged. We work hard to ensure the opposite is true; and we make this quite clear early on with new employees. We are rare for a UK business to give all employees share options in the company - fundamentally so that everyone has a stake and ownership in the business and to encourage initiative. Roles are Deskpro come with lots of autonomy and we actively encourage all employees to think creatively and freely within their projects. We've developed talent at Deskpro consistently, so people who have joined as interns have been promoted to management levels - and one of the key character traits we look for here is taking initiative and ownership. It's not true that people don't talk or socialise much; we have a break out kitchen/seating area specifically to enable this, we have weekly team lunches and a range of other events (our careers page has some photos of a few of these) and a lot of people have made life long friends at Deskpro. Saying this, we do work hard - people will not spend their whole day chatting; because everyone's role is important to our growth and to building our product for our customers. Very rarely has this been an issue; but in this specific case; work ethic was not aligned. We got this hire wrong, and I take ownership for that mistake - but I don't believe this review represents the reality of working at Deskpro. Chris, CEO