You'll be the token tick box - Still too white - Anonymous employee BORN SOCIAL Employee Review

2.0
Feb 1, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Overall a good company with nice people. Decent culture and after-work events. The work they produce is good but not great.

Cons

No BAME person is in a position of leadership despite all their diversity and inclusion talk and efforts. Perhaps comes from a place of white guilt rather than actual sincerity. They need a better tactic and culture. Most black men have been let go. Perhaps they're more comfortable around female women of colour as they aren't perceived as a threat. Noticed that people of colour have to code-switch or be assimilated and accultured into mainstream white culture. There is no direct racism but it can get exhausting being in that environment. Nice people that unfortunately don't know how to be honest or transparent when it comes to necessary conversations. Contradictory feedback.

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BORN SOCIAL Response
3y
Thank you for leaving us this review. Although it's hard to read it's really important we hear and acknowledge all experiences of Born Social and we are sorry that this was yours. Please know we have shared and are discussing this feedback at leadership level across all departments. It is so valuable to have these conversations directly so if you feel comfortable talking to us more, please do reach out to anyone at Born that you would be happy to talk to. We are very aware that our Senior Leadership Team lacks ethnic diversity. We have not needed to hire into this team in over 6 years but as and when we do, diversity will be a high priority. Our latest team data records 24% BAME team members and we have various initiatives, both internally and with industry working groups, focussed on continuing to increase ethnic diversity in our team and our industry. Over the last 3 years, we have retained many of our ethnically diverse team members. In total 26% of leavers have been POC, which is proportionate with our team ethnicity. We do talk about inclusion, diversity and representation a lot. Not because we think we are perfect but because we are constantly striving to improve ourselves and our industry. It is never our intention to come across as though we are faultless but we cannot afford to wait to talk about it until we are. We will continue to keep it high on our company agenda. We work extremely hard to build a diverse and inclusive culture but in the spirit of one of our values - Make Each Other Better - we always welcome feedback and conversation about where there is room to improve.

Explore other reviews about BORN SOCIAL

3.0
Jun 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Young and dynamic super cool projects

Cons

Too many slacks messages? Groups and subgroups and could improve communication

4.0
Jan 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Talented team mates, ambitious company goals, big clients, good benefits, kind and inclusive culture, good feedback culture and people management. I had a great time working with the teams I was in and met loads of great people. Potential for amazing ideas and executions

Cons

Bad processes are holding the creative ideas back and wasting time and money, There is a lot of talk about changing structures but no real evidence of the change. There are redundancies in resourcing but that is the weakest in terms of the work being split up efficiently and executed. Briefing is unclear and not set up for collaboration and then people want to shift the blame. Creatives are super talented but the production process doesn’t allow for the work to be at the level they want it to be. When a client has to much money they dictate unreasonable asks and there isn’t enough push back. The work suffers and people get burnt out. Personally I didn’t get a lot of satisfaction from the work

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BORN SOCIAL Response
5mo
Hi - we really appreciate you sharing such thoughtful feedback. You make some good and fair points around tension between process and output. It's a challenge most agencies grapple with, especially as they scale too 200 . As you've mentioned its something we've been candid about really focussing on in the second half of this year and this work is definitely starting to pay off. Thanks again for your review - especially for all your positive words on our ambition, people and culture. We agree on that too!
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