UKEC

1.0

6 Mar 2021

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

Not like many other small education recruitment companies in the UK, this company has a comprehensive company structure, HR system. Therefore a measured salary structure, Education Adviser and Supporting Officer get paid 23k base salary. Part-timer gets paid national minimum wage. Good range of benefits in this company, although very basic. You will have life insurance, Health Cash Plan(you can reimburse for eye tests, teeth examination), a very basic 3% pension contribution(your minimum contribution is 5%), some brand discounts which they never bothered to explain to you. Bare legal minimum holiday allowance of 20 days+8 days of bank holidays.

Cons

I would strongly advise anyone who would be considering this company, DON’T JOIN! Toxic Management The managers are manipulative, dishonest, and will lie straight to your face. They tell so many lies they forget what's been said. Most of the time you find what’s been said contradicts itself. The managers will name and shame you at public meetings, they will call you stupid, useless and say you will not find a job anywhere else. They said ‘you should feel lucky to even have a job in this company’, ‘you need to be grateful to this benevolent company UKEC’. In some offices, they only have 1-2 staff but they will still have a dedicated manager who does nothing but forcing works onto the other staff and humiliate them. Dishonest company practice During the covid 19 pandemic, This company has put people on full-time furlough to receive the government grant of 80% of the employee’s salary in early 2020. Yet they kept the same sales target and asked the staff to work during these claimed furlough hours. Again after November 2020, they put staff on flexible furlough yet kept the same sales target and encouraged staff to work during those hours which they reported to the government as furloughed hours. Forced overtime You will have to do lots and lots of overtime because they simply put too much work and unrealistic target on you. You will personally be threatened with dismissal if you do not do work at night or during weekends. No recognitions If you exceeded your target and work, they will say you are just doing what is in your job description. If you have difficulty such as mental stress, workload problem, not knowing the best practice for the work. There will be no training, no discussions, and only threats of future dismissal on the table. No annual pay rise. Your annual appraisal will mean nothing. Your base salary does not rise with inflation, only your commission will rise a tiny bit if you over achieve the previous year's target (they have this overcomplicated chart to calculate your new bonus, for the little it increases, this bonus policy looks pathetic). Working visa = constant threats This company will give international recent graduated students working visa sponsorship. Yet you will have to pay for the visa fee yourself. People who are sponsored by this company will get so much more threats of dismissal just because they know you do not want to lose your visa. People who are considering this company just for the visa, I would ask, do you really want to have no personal life and no dignity for 5 years? High turnaround rate There is a rumour going around the company at the moment, that this company is strategically putting huge pressure on individual staff, so they would quit avoiding the stress. So many people quit in the last few months I will say it might be 1/3 of the total employee headcount. To be fair, I am not surprised by the toxic management style done by this company. Even people who are still with the company are only looking for their next job so they could leave too. Negative business outlook With covid 19, there is a good chance that international students will decide not to come to UK to study and delay their education entry for another year. This will cause big cashflow problem for UKEC as they work on the annual commission paid by the universities. It is possible that this company will not survive through the pandemic. Thus low job security.

UKEC Response

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback, we will address each of the points raised in turn as follows: With regards to the points raised regarding holiday entitlement, your comment is slightly inaccurate as we have loyalty rewards each year for employees with more than one year of service. With respect to our perks and retail discounts online portals, we have a comprehensive benefits brochure available to view in our internal company documents library. We also produced a number of walk-through user guide videos to explain how these portals work and how the discounts can be accessed. We must clarify that it is made clear within the company that overtime is not mandatory. No one is forced to work outside of their contracted hours, however, sales staff often opt to work overtime, to accommodate client's availability - their overtime would then be awarded as ‘time off in lieu’. We have a comprehensive commission structure which would award our sales staff monthly, therefore those who exceed their sales target would be recognised for their achievement straight away. Whilst we have unfortunately not been able to offer any annual pay rises to our staff in 2020 due to the knock on effects of the pandemic, however historically the company has consistently awarded this pay rises after each annual review. We also conduct annual salary benchmarking analysis to ensure that we remain the top of the market in terms of remuneration packages for our industry. Regarding the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, at present the majority of our staff are being flexibly furloughed, which means they are working on reduced hours, and are in receipt of 80% of their normal salary for any hours not worked. We have been strictly adhering the rules set out within the CJRS under the advice of our external Employment Law firm, who ensures that we remain compliant whilst acting with the best interest of our employees in mind. If any reports are made of ‘forced work during furlough’ we would encourage you to contact HR and we will investigate thoroughly. The company takes any and all reports of bullying extremely seriously and will conduct a thorough investigation of any such claims. If we find any evidence that these claims are substantiated, then the appropriate disciplinary measures will be undertaken accordingly. We have taken your feedback on board, regarding management, the majority of which have actually worked their way up from being frontline sales staff themselves, but we have more comprehensive management training being designed presently. We must respectfully disagree with your point regarding the negative business outlook with the company. Whilst it is indisputable that covid-19 has had an impact upon arguably every industry. The effects of the pandemic will not be felt forever, our organisation has experienced substantial growth since we were established in 1999. We are positive that international students will still seek a renowned UK higher education, and the reintroduction of the post study work visa will surely provide an influx of new cohorts. It is also wildly incorrect to state that a third of staff has exited the business. Even throughout the pandemic, our headcount has been stable for the past year or so at around 100 employees nationwide. As we always actively encourage open channels of communication and feedback from employees both past and present so that we can continue to improve the employee experience wherever possible. You are well within your rights to raise a grievance in a formal channel so that we can investigate any claims. If you feel like you wish to raise these issues in an official capacity and work with us constructively then please email: hrpeople@xinlung.com

TOXIC Workplace- AVOID!! - Anonymous employee UKEC Employee Review

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