SoSo - Project Manager Navitas Employee Review

When you first enter the attractive looking but soulless building on the outskirts of Oxford that sinking feeling sets in. It's a desolate back office that just doesn't work as a European HQ. Spartan facilities, nowhere to go for lunch, not enough space for meetings and sometimes no space for you to work, no office culture or office manager, disparate departments that don't interact and no social programme. Just a lot of hapless people working in the same building. After a day's induction at the start you're left alone for months to work out your own job- this was positive for me, particularly as I got to work with some great people but a lot of the time I felt that my work lacked legitimacy, The work that I did is intrinsically important but it’s never really interested the movers and shakers in the company. They like to celebrate some big achievements but most of time display no interest in what people do on a day-to-day basis. The senior leadership gatherings are legendary as they exhibit a disturbingly liturgical character not dissimilar to political gatherings in one-party states. Over the last 5 years the entire senior leadership team has turned over at least 3 times with one exception: the European CEO remains comfortably at the helm. He promotes young, inexperienced and clueless but ambitious people but gets sick of them very quickly as they add little value and are unable to add value anyway as they would be seen as too much of a threat. You learn quickly that Navitas operates a culture of secrecy. On the one hand, lots of effort is put into comms and the company has mastered the art of corporate self-promotion and spin. We actually learn a lot from how this is done effectively so well done there. But most of the time most employees haven’t a clue what’s going on and they remain quite detached from the company. Hence high levels of employee turnover particularly in the Oxford HQ, low staff engagement and a culture of fear, unfortunately, and sadly at all levels, e.g. amongst College Directors, Heads of Sales etc.. These guys know not to speak up as they have seen so many of their colleagues who have spoken up disappear in the past for doing so. To be fair, the company did introduce an anonymous staff survey in 2018 but the mgt were totally unprepared for the results: Navitas ended up close to the bottom quartile of comparable companies and deep-seated malaise was expressed across the global network. Little was done to address chronic levels of unhappiness at the time, which if anything have intensified. There's nothing worse than management appearing to ignore the survey results and blaming Colleges rather than the source of the problem which is the nasty and rapacious upper management and owners. In fact, since the company changed hands in 2019, things appear to have got worse. Two rounds of redundancy so far, pay cuts for all and the scrapping of bonus schemes are part of an effort to double profits in five years, presumably so the company can be sold off again. But this company and this sector are in a right mess. Covid-19 has exacerbated what was already a decline in the take-up of international pathways globally and companies such as Navitas have been trying to reposition themselves as global intelligence units. The Pathways model has traditionally attracted high margins and financial returns but this will not be found in other activities.Short-term fixes such as Navitas teaching home students or investing in accommodation blocks or managed campuses are either providing more modest returns or costing them a fortune. And so, it's an industry which has an uncertain future and a company that will have some difficult years. At present every single cost is being cut to the bone. If the culture was healthier and there was a genuine interest in people I would encourage you to join and rebuild it but this is not going to happen. To quote John Cooper-Clarke “Things are going to get worse nurse, things are going to get worse.” I conclude, surprisingly by awarding Navitas 3 stars, but am giving these stars to the majority of on-the-ground staff who are good, decent and competent people. This 3-star rating is one of the company’s more generous appraisals on this Glassdoor forum and is higher than the rating that the company itself has awarded some fantastic staff in their annual pay review, but I think that their punitive method of “valuing” staff by demoralising them comes down to cluelessness and fear rather than malice amongst the ranks of some of the senior leaders.