Toxic culture - Anonymous employee OLIVER Agency Employee Review

I joined Oliver Agency from a previous company which had a really great, progressive culture. Whilst every company has its challenges and nowhere is perfect, it was such a shock joining Oliver. It was like going back in time, and not in a good way. I experienced a company that was pretending to be progressive whilst holding incredibly old fashioned views and not willing to do the real work required to bring about positive change. I saw many talented people crying on a daily basis and really burnt out from the cumulative effects of the culture and environment. Chaotic and shambolic at every turn (people and systems) with nothing joined up. I experienced this from acceptance of contract until and after I left. Attempts to join anything up result in individuals being left to try to do everything themselves. I experienced this personally and saw it with a few excellent colleagues who were trying to do great work. Lack of solidarity or community. I didn't experience any feeling of 'being in it together' with other colleagues. I experienced many people pushing work at me with no collaboration, then disappearing as quickly as they could. There was a real lack of accountability. It was psychologically unsafe. There was a cliquey vibe in my department, perpetuated at all levels. You were either deemed to be part of the 'in' group, and included, or subtly kept on the 'outside'. There was a lot of gossiping about other colleagues. I heard that wonderful people had their names and reputations blasted via gossip and people seemed to believe what they were hearing. Chaos and untenable workload stemmed from the senior leader in my function. They also took a wildly old fashioned 'parent-child' approach to dealing with everybody. Hostile and abrasive. It was so incredibly uninspiring. I believe that there was good intent around inclusion and the company's values. However, it didn't feel like an inclusive place to work for all the reasons that I've mentioned. When inclusion feels like it's for the optics, and some of the people shouting the loudest about it are strongly contributing to the lack of a genuinely inclusive environment, including the astonishing levels of nepotism, everything starts to feel hollow and it's really difficult to stay engaged. People were just so miserable and the whole experience was generally toxic. I'm so disappointed as I was excited for what I could bring to the company.