Dynamic - Director BookTrust Employee Review

Working with some very talented and creative colleagues and offering good work-life balance

Work at BookTrust can be frustrating, as there is a lot of talk and not much action. This is largely due to a senior team that spends all day in navel-gazing meetings without taking actions or decisions, takes forever to review and sign off work, and spends more time creating new job titles and promotions for each other than providing genuine leadership to their teams (with some exceptions). Talented and experienced junior staff are not trusted to carry out work independently and there is too much emphasis on processes (producing reams of documentation that go nowhere) instead of outputs. Due to high turnover there is little institutional memory or learning, leading to inefficient reinventions of the wheel. I know that some are trying to change this culture but I can see why it is proving sticky and has been described as toxic by others.

Some lovely colleagues that are doing their best in a difficult working culture Flexible approach to work/life balance and agile working

Often a very frustrating place to work - senior management are ineffective and there is little to no consideration of the practicalities of creating a strategy that works in real terms for those who are delivering it. Condescending tone of messaging and communication with a focus on engaging a target audience that is poorly defined and alienates front line delivery partners. The organisation has spent very little time getting to know its staff so the skills and experience of colleagues is overlooked in favour of using agencies who deliver nothing new in terms of knowledge or impact and are over-celebrated at the expense of staff morale. Some senior staff spend nearly all their time in back to back meetings meaning that their teams don't get the input or attention needed to be heard or feel valued and when this is raised nothing is done to improve upon the problem. Some clear instances of bullying are overlooked and there are many cases of seniors belittling colleagues publicly which creates a toxic environment where people are afraid to speak up or share their views. Over commitment to a way of working that doesn't allow the right people to be involved at the correct times when decisions are made. Poor time management which leads to frantic and disorganised approach to projects and a lack of respect for cross organisational working leaves staff struggling to manage priorities and capacity. High turnover of staff is ignored and written off as acceptable attrition rather than exploring the problems within the organisation. Very little opportunity to progress unless you are in certain teams which over dominate the strategic steer at the expense of input of others.