Torchbox Reviews

4.0

73% would recommend to a friend

(36 total reviews)

73% positive business outlook

Torchbox has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 36 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Torchbox employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

36 reviews
1.0
24 Aug 2023

A disappointing experience

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Bonus scheme, some of the social activities

Cons

On the face of it a noble organisation, but underneath it all there are a number of concerning attitudes and practices. There are some very inexperienced and poor managers who deal with situations in a very immature and unprofessional manner. Workloads are unnecessarily high, and senior management assume that it's wise to load people up with work until they crumble. Which makes it no different to every other agency (aside from the clients.) I notice lots of positive reviews which i am sure come from middle managers who have been asked to add "honest" reviews regarding workloads. SMT are often disparaging and quasi corporate in their attitude to teams, showing little respect for those doing the work and are offen openly negative, even when they have very little understanding of the discipline. Overall, there is a lack of focus on career development and training and the priority from managers is that employees just process as much work as possible with a smile on their face because they should feel lucky to have a job here.

1.0
29 Jun 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free vegan lunches on Wednesdays. Likeable founders. Employee ownership started just as left - this may have led to some improvements. I hope so.

Cons

Where to start? There's another review on here regarding the Marketing team that I completely concur with (I almost wondered if I'd written it!). From the way the company talk about themselves, you'd imagine you'd be working in a friendly, open and supportive culture. However, the exact opposite is true within the Marketing team. I've had a few years to cool off and I'm still aggrieved by how I was treated throughout my time there. I was a complete novice to digital marketing when I joined and, within about 2 months, was running my own accounts and billing hours for them. Good work was not recognised and the inevitable mistakes that a novice would make were dealt with harshly (I was threatened with gross misconduct for being late with a client report - no performance management or constructive support with that). Most startling was the complete lack of awareness or sensitivity to managing people as the other review mentioned. I can say first hand, it's even worse for those who are managing mental health challenges. I told my line manager I was experiencing some difficulties (perhaps understandable given the culture I'd walked into) and their response was to inform HR without my consent who then grilled me for an hour about the nature of it. The outcome was something along the lines of 'keep talking to us'. In order for that to happen, you have to have trust and they'd done nothing to suggest I could trust them. And no reasonable adjustments or concrete actions were agreed as an outcome. The pressure to keep billing hours high continued and the volume of work and accounts steadily increased. More widely, there was a strange cliquey culture throughout the company. I've listed free lunches on Wednesday as a pro but it was also intensely socially awkward at times as we did that as a whole company who had very little connection to the marketing team. I often felt excluded from conversations both inside and outside of my team and there was a marked contrast in the togetherness of some teams versus how my team operated. Also, don't believe the hype about skiing trips - those stopped some years ago when I joined but they still say they do it. Perhaps they've resumed? My salary was very poor but I've noticed they've now put salary ranges on their jobs page and look far better now.

2.0
7 Aug 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Supportive and collaborative team environment. Strong emphasis on transparency and shared values. Opportunities for skill development and learning Flexible work arrangements and a focus on work-life balance. Exposure to diverse client projects.

Cons

Lack of clear communication on performance expectations. Low salary compared to the market. Sudden project and contract changes without prior notice. Context switching. Performance feedback can be vague and non-specific. Misleading reasons for project reassignment. Inadequate transparency about performance review processes. The sudden job cuts were not aligned with the company’s stated values of transparency. Although they do a lot of open-source work, they are not open-minded to changes.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 36 Reviews

Glassdoor has 37 Torchbox reviews submitted anonymously by Torchbox employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Torchbox is right for you.