Improvement needed - Anonymous employee Ridgeway Employee Review

Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. We carry out structured exit interviews with leavers, led by independent members of the HR team to provide an opportunity to share positive experiences and any constructive criticism. It’s disappointing not to see a reflection of this interview portrayed by your comments above. Our onboarding process for new starters has been deemed by many as very comprehensive, within which there are daily and weekly catchups with peers and managers, and support for self-learning through documentation, video, and training courses. It’s disappointing that you believe a new starter is not given ample training, and I consider your remarks regarding new starter support to be very mis-leading and demonstrably inaccurate. Within a senior technical role, it is important to be able to understand and commercially keep to the agreed brief and technologies, with adherence to process, technical and operational best practices, and to provide effective and timely communication within the team. The cause and effect of not doing this provides additional risk to successful outcomes and can result in be the need to give greater clarity and direction. You may have personally perceived this as additional close management. Internal projects and self-learning are managed in-line with client projects, given that as a service organisation we sell time and therefore need to ensure that effort (and cost) is focussed on the correct outcomes and managed accordingly. Strategically learning the *right* new technology, discussing and agreeing this as a peer group, and sharing that knowledge effectively within the team is absolutely seen as valuable. Considerable time has and will always be provided for it, based on sound justification and robust estimates and plans, providing a business case. Conversely to your negative comments of an individual within SMT, this person is a strong advocate of learning and advancing the technologies we use in an appropriate manner to further your own knowledge, the wider team’s, agency, and our successful delivery to clients. I am somewhat surprised as to your comments regarding not having 1-to-1’s or annual reviews, given I am confident as to the author of this review, and the evidence that’s been provided to me including timesheets data. Most of the team has regular 1-to-1’s and reviews, and whilst I would like to see the frequency improved in some cases, there is no instance where if a team had or does ask for time, we would not provide it. Thanks for your advice; I regularly reflect on how we manage the agency and members of our team. I consider that in those instances where good talent has moved on, that we have helped nurture and improve that person during their tenure here, and it has been the right time for them to advance in their career, which is something we take great pride in. If you would like to have a further confidential discussion regarding your comments, please email hr@ridgeway.com, or contact me (the MD) directly.