Pros
Passionate people on the ground doing the work.
Cons
Very top-heavy. Managers are easily outnumbering the 'workers' 5-to-1 where the focus of meetings is on framing issues for reporting to seniors, rather than practical problem solving. Exacerbated by a heavy reliance on temporary contractors in key management posts instead of promoting within. You couldn't make this up for a comedy sketch - a typical meeting with an army of managers encircling a single worker to do all the work, setting arbitrary deadlines and absorbing that worker's time with reporting and objective setting. No trust. There's a toxic culture and the good people are leaving. Many cases of managerial bullying that have not been dealt with. In my experience it is not safe to speak to HR. Micro-management is seriously impeding the work but staff are told that they have a choice and can leave. Poor planning, overlapping efforts and lack of cross-communication repeatedly leads to inefficiencies, wasted resources and significant sums of money getting sunk into external consultancies that more often than not, deliver something unfit for purpose. Management don't learn from these mistakes and are stuck in a cycle, then re-hire the same consultants at high cost to fix things. There is an overabundance of superficial initiatives and objective-setting activities and that are occur at a expense to Homes England in people, travel, hotels, venues and catering. They yield little to no results and inevitably fizzle out. Likely a result of the workplace being used as a managerial career development playground instead of a committed, long-term endeavour. To be clear though, there is very little chance of career or salary progression for permanent employees not mixed up in the management cronyism. Finally, promises made at interview regarding remote work are not being honoured and the CEO has made a statement that we need to be in an office for 50% of our time. This is being tracked electronically.