Worst Place I've Worked - Digital Marketing Executive Radius Systems Employee Review

The approvals process was much too difficult to navigate. Some of the projects I was working on were up to 3 years in the making - and the reason for this became very obvious. Design work gets constantly bounced back and forth between departments. Some departments are very clearly understaffed, meaning that I regularly had requests left unanswered, and I was left without the crucial knowledge or assets required to complete the tasks. I was asked in my mid-term review to be more proactive in obtaining notes/approvals, however there’s only so much of managing upwards that I can do before it’s an issue that is out of my control. I feel that lower-level approvals could have been delegated to a middle-manager, and I also feel that the role of a Digital Marketing Executive should come with some level of implied autonomy. In addition to this, many notes given by the head of the department were much too impractical to implement. Other notes given, and indeed some copy provided, was very vague, non-specific and missing crucial information. I feel that some of the designs submitted were criticised much too harshly by the head of department. Some of the conscious decisions made in designs had been pointed out as flaws, and I felt that I had had to justify my design choices. While I realise that some design choices can be a hard sell, to critique work in such a harsh and non-constructive manner undermined my role as a graphic designer, of which I have many years of experience in. The sick day policy and the working from home policy were inconsistent and nonsensical. These policies do not come from a single voice, but are instead at the discretion of your line manager. In times of sickness, there is no proactive encouragement to work from home when you're unwell, meaning that employees are regularly exposed to sickness in the office. Even the head of the department was coming in ill. To make this worse, the threat of a disciplinary hearing in the case of three absences, is regularly held over you. The office is unclean, stuffy and with very little space. Regard for personal space is regularly ignored by employees, with something of a surveillance culture. I regularly felt under constant surveillance. Throughout all of this, HR are powerless. I lost count the amount of times I heard "there's nothing we can do".