From joining during a lockdown and having to onboard + work remotely for the first few months, I can honestly say the culture at the beginning was fantastic. The company was doing well, people were doing well, everyone was positive and optimistic, and it felt like I had found a company that lived by its values and cared for its employees. But as soon as things started getting tough and the company couldn't keep up with it's aggressive growth plans and targets or navigate the market conditions, things started turning south and true colours were shown... Here are a few cons (ie. reasons why I decided to leave Personio): Declining Product - Personio's platform is decent, but we have always been playing catch-up behind our biggest competitor. We were constantly told that our product team is 3x larger, so naturally we should be able to ship stuff faster. However in reality, Personio's onboarding tool hasn't changed in 2 years, still has an ugly boring UX that hasn't changed in 2 years, Reporting capabilities which has stayed the same for 2 years, developed a super basic Performance Management module which barely works for companies, and acquired a ticketing system which no customer has ever requested. Our biggest competitor on the other hand, is creating an increasingly-obvious gap between us and them, and building features that deliver more value for customers, making it almost a miracle is you win a deal against them given we're priced pretty much the same. Sales Leadership - I can't speak too much of other departments, but the leadership in the sales function is a disaster. Too many inexperienced team leads calling shots and creating a genuinely horrible culture (look at all the other reviews from Dublin SDRs for evidence). Due to performance across the company, they introduced what they termed as a "Performance-driven culture", which basically translated to hyper-micromanagement. When in actual fact the low levels of performance were down to massive over-hiring, terrible coaching, poor product and subsequently unrealistic targets. This resulted in a crazy attrition rate and roughly half of new joiners not passing probation, creating a really toxic cycle of hiring and firing (which as you can imagine did wonders for office atmosphere). There is more I could say, but I'd probably start getting specific people in trouble. Fake Values - when I started the values really felt like they meant something but I realise I was just being naive thinking that now. Couple of examples. #CustomerEmpathy - last couple days of the month you get the greenlight from a customer, however the person who needs to sign off is in hospital or on holiday. If we were empathetic to customers, we would work around them, however leadership would try and force you to send aggressive emails to try and get an innocent HR Manager to disturb their CEO or CFO just so we can add a bit of closed revenue to this month because we're so far behind target... #SeekToImprove - this is actually an Operating Principle (same thing pretty much). We had an Engagement Survey in May or June 2022 where the Sales team in London I believe scored the lowest in the company, or at least London as an office did. For a good couple of months nothing happened, nothing was actioned, nothing. It took my team lead, leading our team to believe our individual targets were getting reduced when in fact only the overall team target was (work that one out...), for us to end up having a couple of really open and frank discussions about how we're feeling. Rather than coming out with any action points we were just promised performance would get better just as things were, we brought up the low salary and the next month got given less than 3% increase (when realistically we were probably about 15-20% off market rate), we were promised they would work on the London office vibe but all they did was start introducing new joiners to the teams on their first day and did a couple of on-the-cheap socials in the office for a couple weeks, then as predicted they stopped that. The point here is, the company would bang on about being open to feedback, but in reality nothing ever happened. Last thing I will say on 'Fake Values' is how as a HR-tech we push out all of this Thought Leadership content, when actually in reality we don't do barely any of it ourselves. 4. Culture - building on the above a bit more, the London office is incredibly depressing and I genuinely feel sorry for new joiners having to experience it. Luckily my immediate team would be good fun, but the vibe across the office is really weird, with nobody talking to each other and no effort from the leaders in the office to improve things. For people's birthdays, managers would make no effort and once my manager literally just dumped a cheap chocolate cake from Sainsbury's on my colleagues desk still in the box and that was his happy birthday. For people joining the team, they have stopped making any effort to integrate them and feel welcome with welcome lunches or welcome drinks. I genuinely struggle to remember a time where my manager or another leader has rallied troops down the pub and bought a round. This all sounds trivial, but these are the little things that make people feel valued, engaged, and part of a team.
