Pros
Bonuses were ok (unless your cluster manager was having a bad day and told all managers in your area to only five achieved or not achieved) and £500 a year to spend on certain things or take as cash. Good amount of training. There were many more pros in my first year than in my last two so can't include many about the company as it stands now. My first manager was fantastic, he might need reminding five times to do something but he was a great people manager, so supportive and recognised the extra lengths you went to with customers. Santander would eventually take feedback on board and there was an absolute wealth of information available to help with complex queries. Fantastic colleagues in my branch (not a pro of Santander as such as majority of local branches were miserable) but out of sheer luck rather than judgement as managers weren't allowed to interview for their own branches. It paid the bills and redundancy amount could have been a lot worse. Yearly pay rises were above inflation and the odd couple of hundred quid twice during my time as a thank you to all staff.
Cons
ANNOUNCING TSB PURCHASE ON DAY OF REDUNDANCY FOR MYSELF AND HUNDREDS OF COLLEAGUES! Prime example of how much this company cares about its workers. You will just be a number. The expectations to sell insurance products were getting ridiculous. You're told it's not selling as there are no targets, then you're told you need at least X a week. The manager of our cluster told my manager to march into the office and confront me in front of my customer because I had gotten an insurance quote (which she took) on her device instead of her spending 40 minutes on the phone (which they were not prepared to do) so we could get the referral (digital first bank yet we didn't get any recognition for customers taking out insurance digitally, only if they'd spent 40 minutes on the phone to a human being which costs money, example of how backwards some things were). We were told no one could over-achieve during the last bonus period, the manager of our cluster made sure no manager gave this rating. I had consistently 10 out of 10 surveys, all my metrics were great and I was screwed over, it was blamed on an investigation that was dropped and told wouldn't effect anything, that the area manager agreed with what I did etc. I went off for surgery two weeks before redundancy, didn't hear a word from my manager regarding surgery or leaving the company (he was on leave leading up to my last day). You work so hard for nothing. The job was demoralising and THANK YOU Santander for the redundancy. Staff were forced to go to other branches. I was there half hour early just to be able to catch up on work and often left late. Some days were five one hour appointments (often wasn't long enough) plus telephony work and lunch. No time for admin. We were told we'd have an hour a week to keep up with training, free time to do whatever we needed to. You'd be lucky if you had half hour every other week (some staff got the hour consistently as a cashier who didn't need the time, go figure!). System issues constantly and contractor cut backs meaning I had to FIGHT to get our only mens toilet fixed as they were suggesting they weren't spending money on such low priority jobs. I always wanted to get my foot in the door, progressing in the company. There were opportunities available at times (one of which for black women only, talk about inclusion) but not at all easy to understand what you'd be right for etc. Just regret wasting three years of my life there.