I genuinely believe AFH have a good offering for clients and try to put their best interests at the heart of the business decisions however in doing so they have completely forgotten about the staff who are the people that provide that back office service to clients. If your staff are happy, feel well cared for, listened to and fairly remunerated for what they do then they will respect the company and want to deliver a service to the best of their ability. If you don’t do these things, which unfortunately is the case at AFH, the reverse is true. They focus too much on ‘cheap labour’ and harbour an atmosphere of ‘us and them’ between senior management and staff. I genuinely believe the CEO wants to do right by the staff but he is surrounded by yes people who shelter him from what’s really happening on the office floor. They don’t look after their own, people who have been loyal to the company for many years, other than those who have made it to a seat at the board table. When it comes to promotions, they prefer to recruit externally rather than those with experience who have worked their way through the ranks which is often a cause of frustration for staff who keep being promised their next promotion is just around the corner. HR is a shambles and you wouldn’t want to tell them anything remotely confidential otherwise it’s round the office as gossip in no time at all. They certainly don’t want people who will challenge the order of things or suggest a new way of thinking. It is a shame as I think the company has a lot of potential but unfortunately, despite beating you over the head about being ‘the employer of choice’, right now they are anything but. The company is growing rapidly but unless they do something soon about the multitude of unhappy staff (I interacted with all the departments in the business and almost every single person felt the same way), the entire back office support system will collapse and they won’t have any long term, knowledgeable or experienced staff to hold the business up.
