Elements Talent Consultancy Reviews

Elements as a whole is painted as this hallowed hall of retribution for all those who fell victim to the ruthless whims of Agency recruitment and the misogynistic/Sexist/Racist stereotypes that follow it. Leadership: There is a distinct lack of leadership across the business that is shielded through many initiatives that are often scrapped and rehashed as the same thing. There have been instances where more serious issues have not be tackled with the same ferocity as more trivial issues e.g Town Halls have been called just to discuss chewing gum stuck on tables, the entire management team being made to apologise to the org. due to jokes on slack about someone eating another persons fish etc. Blowing such things out of proportion does not give the system much credibility especially when more serious issues are not tackled in the same way. Ever since the CEO planted a fake question in the Town Hall addressing rumours towards his personal life, there has been a distinct lack of trust between employees and senior management. In said meeting the CEO inferred that his management team relayed confidential information that employees had confided in them yet again undermining any trust in the system. Bar very few, senior management consists of a group of (imho) under-qualified people who at regular occasions can be seen to be quite inept at their jobs. They all bow to the CEOs whim but complain behind his back. This can lead to disparities in emotions across the org. as the CEO is often put as the point of blame when in reality it is the subpar management team dropping the ball a lot of the time by never challenging him. However the CEO is not absolved of any responsibility. Favouritism or failing upwards is partly why they have found themselves in this position, justified only by potential longevity within the business or how much you do on the “Elements Side” rather than tangible results achieved on projects. COVID: Management deserves some praise for some of the work during the beginning of the pandemic in trying to keep morale high. There have unfortunately been a few instances since that have left a bitter taste in many peoples mouths. We were told we were in negative EBITDA so we had to sadly make our juniors redundant. In the same breath we were told of the need to hire new Seniors to do the same job some juniors were very capable of doing whilst also reminding everyone of a £2000 referral fee. Town halls went from being anonymous to live questions answered in front of the business which left them feeling far less genuine as nobody is likely to challenge someone paying them so boldly without the protection of anonymity. In the penultimate weeks of furlough, redundancy went from a word that dare not be spoken to our reality ‘we made a promise to the board’. It was made to seem like it would only happen in the most impossible of circumstances especially as our regular finance updates were showing we were slowly making money again and attracting new partners. In the aim of maintaining morale, the news was often delivered as 'it’s bad but it could be so much worse' week after week and many questions around redundancy were often avoided so there was a feeling of security around the business. You can imagine the shock when an impromptu town hall was called immediately after an emergency board meeting that took place just before the bank holiday weekend. The result of which was a written statement, where questions were banned, announcing the risk of redundancies for some including a pregnant team member. Even more shocking is once this was announced for the juniors (some of whom were shoehorned and undercut in salary offers to join) a few weeks later Elements then announced a hiring drive for people with more experience ‘it’s what our partners were asking for’. If that isn't a slap in the face I don't know what is. Whilst redundancies were being explained to the work force fellow employees decided it would be an appropriate time to ask about new hires and US expansion. This was completely insensitive but encouraged by those leading the conversation. We were all told about how well the business was doing despite the current pandemic. We were fed information under the guise of complete transparency but at the eleventh hour the senior team contradicted every statement they had ever made about caring about the well being of all of their employees. Furlough was made to sound like a personal favour, not a government funded scheme. We were also regularly reminded of how the CEO took a temporary 100% salary sacrifice to help maintain the everyday running of the business. Although this highlighted the severity of the impact of COVID it again was not aligned with the reality for those being made redundant - surprisingly many of which are not majority stakeholders in a company worth a few million. Racism: Addressing Racism or 'Unconscious Bias' as it is often referred to as in the workplace. Unfortunately this is something I have found to be present both in it’s casual form and in much more overt and sinister forms. I was shocked to hear a senior stakeholder apparently tell a member of staff not to sit with other black employees as 'as it would be bad for their perception of leadership within the company' as well as an employee being told to tone down their blackness. Drug misuse: Drug Misuse in the company is of zero tolerance as we are regularly told but how can anybody take this seriously when the actual misuse comes from top down. This is hypocritical at its best.

* Cliquey culture - a lot of favouritism, people being over-promoted and overpaid due to who they know, people getting put on projects due to who they know. I felt really uncomfortable when I went into the office - people who had obviously been friends a long time just stuck together and I felt like a complete outsider. * The CEO is an arrogant fool - he thinks Elements is the best business ever and that he hires the best people ever, but he is deluded. They have lost almost all their clients and cannot win any new business, because their reputation has turned to mud. He doesn't even have the guts to lead the meetings announcing further hibernations of his staff and has started delegating this to his senior leadership team. * The sheer arrogance of the leadership team has been the main cause of the company's demise. They said companies were falling over themselves to work with them and that they had to turn away business. Well, the business they turned away all went to their competitors, and their competitors aren't letting people go - they are actually growing and hiring. * The culture is far too relaxed - people just do whatever they want, work whatever hours they want with no regard to client needs. They take holidays without actually booking the time off and nobody even notices as the managers are completely inexperienced and let their people take the mick. * I heard many people say they get away with just doing a few hours a day and then the rest of the time they just take it easy, as they are based from home and there is no monitoring. And they wonder why they have lost loads of clients when the TA Partners have this sort of attitude. The clients are paying top dollar for a service and they are not receiving that service due to the attitude of the staff at Elements, * They way overpay their staff and then they need to charge their clients premium rates to cover their costs. In a climate where a lot of companies are cost cutting, companies just cannot afford Element's fees and a lot of their competitors are more reasonably priced. * They have no business strategy - they are very reactive and are now just trying to keep their heads above water. * Last year they made everyone take a 15-20% pay cut, but at the same time they hired a couple of senior Execs on 6 figure salaries * They tried to execute an unfair and illegal redundancy process that had no logical or fair selection criteria. They likely got advice that this could land them in hot water so they quickly backtracked and instead hibernated a huge chunk of their workers, meaning they were still employed but weren't getting paid. This lead to mass resignations. * Every month they lose more and more business, and have to hibernate more and more people. Despite there being 6 people focussed on BD efforts, they have won no new business in months. This is likely due to the fact that the BD team are inexperienced. * They pride themselves on hiring the best people in the industry - what a load of rubbish! Most of the TA Partners know something about recruitment, but the majority come from agency backgrounds and aren't prepared for the challenges of working as an internal Recruiter. They also put people onto projects who have no relevant experience and then the Talent Partners spend half their time asking for help and advice from other more experienced Talent Partners as they are out of their depth. * They think everything they do is great (their onboarding, their training, their development, etc), when it's really not * The leadership team do not listen to or take on board feedback - even though their business is failing, they still don't listen to their people In summary, this is the worst company I have worked for in my entire career and I am embarrassed to list Elements on my CV. The leadership team are arrogant and inexperienced, the culture is shocking, the way they treat their people is disgraceful, and the way the business is run is a complete joke. If I could give zero stars I would! Not only would I not recommend anyone work here, I would not recommend any companies consider them as an embedded partner as they have no clue what they are doing.