Pros
After 15 years of success, leadership acknowledged the "startup culture" wasn't wholly positive; urgently needed to improve ways of working, build scalable & repeatable process/playbooks. License & reward was given to all to think, act and do, so for those who were keen to take the opportunity, it was a great experience when it was going well. Incredible growth in the business year on year for many years created opportunities for some.
Cons
Terrible benefits package. Pension was statutory minimum only but not clearly communicated when joining. No standard induction or key consistent messages to colleagues joining. Many were not brought in with the same attitude/expectations laid out to them and some made it very difficult to "move forward faster." (company motto) Change was really needed to transform and sustain the firm's previous success, which was stunted by COVID: new wins and client retention suffered due to market uncertainty of future need for Office premises. Also in this time, much more competition offering the same services entered the market. It felt down to a small number of dedicated individuals to make change in the right places, bottom up, and keep us competitive. Quite obvious friction and strained relationships between departments should have been tackled but silos were allowed to continue. Egos were not challenged, and some toxic characters were enabled. Collaboration was only ever in small isolated pockets, not across the business, so many good people left for other jobs before an evitable downturn or redundancy loomed.