My experiece was COSOL was rife with issues from the start. I stuck it out in hopes that what they said would come to fruition only to learn, they so not have the right leadership to ever make that happen. I am aware that several leaders have left or been removed from the business.
Bullying: People feel empowered to make whatever comments they please, especially to undermind or humilate other employees. If you manage to get into the right ear, they are rewarded and then get to further bully other people. While there is a heavy culture of a 'boys club', (which is still alive and well), women also bully other women - openly in meetings and in the office. I raised issues with HR which were never documented or actioned. My main bully actually got a promotion to a more senior position as a result!
Boys Club: This is deep rooted in the business. If you're friends with the right person and are able to shift the blame elsewhere or not take accountability, you'll be right. If you want to be a change maker and improve the culture, you will be pushed out. They conducted two engagement surveys which reveals issues with leadership, bullying and lack of direction. Spent months talking about it and then made changes which were the opposite of what people asked (eg: rolling back WFH, removing roles which aimed to improve the business - who happened to be women (Boys protect the boys), and have said "We aren't meeting impossible KPIs, your need be 100% billable".
Lack of direction: During my time at COSOL, they had no strategic direction. The direction was "make money", which is fine. However, it doesn't tell your people what they need to do to get there and what actions leadership is taking to build sustainable revenue streams. When an imaginary and never-communicacted KPI wasn't met, someones head was on the chopping block.
Multiple restructures: Due to lack of direction and not hitting KPIs, the business constantly restructures. Moving the chess pieces in hopes this will fix their revenue issues. They do no address the deep cultural issues that are historical, which would in turn, help with their behaviour and bullying issues.
Integrating purchased businesses: Their growth strategy was purchasing smaller businesses who had the clients they wanted. Once purchased, they would "integrate" the staff and then slowly remove them when they became problems, eg: highlighting the operational problems in the business. This is also not a sustainable practice, as the business faces cash flow issues.
Things were fun when we had a dedicated person looking after internal events and inicatives but they flicked them to the curb which I assume was retaliation for something. They never addressed this person leaving despite that role being created because of the engagement survey.
Please read the annual report financial section. They try to spin a story in the front end, ignore that. Read the financial section and look as ASX performance over the last 5 years.
The pay might be appealing, but you will walk away broken and in need of some serious therapy,
