Stable employment - Debt Advisor akinika Debt Recovery Employee Review

Nice people & good location

Overloaded with work, salary falls short of job expectations, no support from senior management, expected to work longer than you are contracted to do, no structure to pay at any level, asked to cover 3 teams but no temp salary increase, there was no adherence to policies which led to different departments not following any procedures leading to inconsistencies, lack of parking, no HR for a longtime until it came to making people redundant & a high turnover of staff.

A lot of the employees are decent people, some of the managers genuinely care about you. Can be challenging work if thats what you're looking for. I did watch a few people get promoted in the time i was there. Akinika will hire pretty much anyone with two brain cells. Very close to town centre. Plenty holidays (28 per year.) Offered overtime on bank holidays etc if you want it. Three weeks intense training. You are allowed to eat at your desk.

So, Akinika will hire anyone, which means that a lot of the staff- especially on the TV Licensing department are all but brain-dead. There is no sense of morale about the office- very dated, coming apart. Desks filthy even though there are constantly cleaners shuffling around. Extremely out-of-date computer systems and equipment. You're expected to use second hand headsets which are about 20 years old. You'll work your fingers to the bone for minimum wage- (i personally was on £14,040 per annum)- expected to work til 9pm at night- yes ringing people up until 5 to 9 asking for money- you can guess how that goes down. Often abused over the phone and threatened but you can only expect that with debt recovery. Mobile phones and all valuables need to be kept in an unsecured locker room (where i previously had things stolen from) and although there is a CCTV camera it is a dud and doesnt work- only there as a deterrent. No on-site parking except for managers. You're made to feel useless as trying to get complaints and problems etc. resolved is next to impossible as you as an agent are not allowed to liaise with other departments such as complaints or correspondence. Customer's sending in important documents are expected to wait 3 or 4 weeks for us to read a single email due to the lack of staff in the correspondence department- and therefore the agents get the brunt of the complaints. Automatic dialler can ring people up to 3 times per day for each account they have with us- and yes some people can have up to 4 or 5 different accounts with us, which means potentially people getting called up to 15 times per day on all of their telephone numbers, and they wonder why they get harassment claims made against them and have to fork out compensation. Computer system extremely out of date and hard to use in the first instance- if you're not particularly computer literate it would be nigh on impossible to pick up. Chairs always broken/stained, feel like you're in high school because you're not allowed your phone out in the corridors/lifts and will get barked at by some manager if you're seen with it. A couple of managers i met had some weird sense of entitlement over the agents as if we're not worth their time, when we're the ones on the front line dealing with problem customers. was promised progression to coaching/manager status but never saw hide nor hair of it. only enter this company if you need something short term, don't look at it as a career opportunity. maybe part-time whilst you're at university or something.