Don’t think the company will be around in 5 years
Pros
Some really good people left .. but not many
Cons
Its a real shame to write this as myself and the large majority of London staff have a real affection for the company. But it has lost its way and is destined to be another company proud of its past and undone by mismanagement and overspending. Years of heavy spending have result in all departments now laying off staff and there is currently a recruitment freeze, although the directors still do as they want and spend and hire contingents on ridiculous day rates while good people lose their full time jobs. The atmosphere in the Kentish Town office can only be described as poisonous, yet up country staff run their teams as mini empires ignoring head office. There is a definate north south divide, but all heavily in favour of the north who get the best facilities and who now run various shared service teams in these cheaper locations with lesser trained staff whilst those whose jobs they’ve taken around the country have been made redundant. The Kentish Town office is impressive as you approach, until you step inside where it is falling apart and dirty. The only time its cared for is at the annual client summer party when we suddenly get paint, plants and other ‘nice’ things, then are told to leave early so the clients don’t get to see any staff! Support teams like HR, finance and IT have continued to get worse instead of better in the past year and some departments have haemoraged money on a series of white elephants impacting staff and jobs. We are supposed to be using a new and improved finance system yet 6 months on there is still no sign other than contingents raking in the cash on year long contracts and more. There was recently a company survey but the majority dont trust it was anonymous after a recent leak to an industry journal about the state of the company resulted in staff emails being traced to find the leak. This view wasn’t helped by people winning prizes for completing this ‘anonymous’ survey. Murphys needs to move forward if it is to survive, but not many people can see how this will happen. A lot of people from other industries joined to help us move forward, but they’ve now either gone or given up - good people are leaving yet the company is rewarding and encouraging those who wont go because they will never get another job anywhere else. Without those working on site and bringing in money, everyone sitting around in the offices making terrible decisions with other peoples money wouldn’t be getting away with how they behave. Leavers are around 20% with some departments as high as 40%!! This is a cry for help to the executives - please don’t run this place into the ground! Stop spending money on flashy gadgets and contingent workers, stop hammering the strategic values and 10 year plan, and start acting on what you say, otherwise it’s all worthless. How can you go on about ‘fit to start’ when nothing is fit to start?! Why not bring in impartial specialists to look deeply at the business and see what people are and are not doing, and look at each area and evaluate the so-called ‘leaders’ who treat their staff with contempt and eventually force them to leave. I have tried and tried to do a good job, but i am just not able to and so, sadly, I have also given up and am leaving.
