Steer clear of the hypertoxic Singapore office. - Anonymous employee Grayling Employee Review

1.0
Jan 5, 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

UK team members were lovely and engaged. The small number of clients were a pleasure to work with, and the projects were interesting and challenging. The salary was decent.

Cons

The regional CEO is an incredibly toxic personality and has bullied countless staff out of their roles in the past few years. She is an aggressive micro-manager who insists on sitting in on even the most trivial of client meetings. Despite this level of oversight, she is ill-equipped for the role, with a poor understanding of the principles or practicalities of agency work. This leads to unrealistic, unreasonable or pointless demands - pulling your time away from the real work. All this means, in practice, is that you work far more hours than you really need to. As a result of the poor management and high turnover, there is a continual loss of clients and an increasingly poor perception of the agency in the Singapore market. Global management is reluctant to sort this problem out, to the detriment of current and future team members, clients and the wider Grayling brand. You can expect to be shouted at, talked over, ignored, harassed and bullied while your colleagues fall over themselves looking for ways to exit the business. You are better off looking elsewhere, than trying to explain to your next employer why you were only with Grayling for a few months.

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5.0
Aug 15, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Management is encouraging and working on building a strong close-knit team

Cons

It is a smaller team, but growing

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Grayling Response
3y
We're delighted to hear this! Thanks for taking the time to review.
1.0
May 28, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Flexibility, including working from home at least one day and week and closed for the week between Christmas and New Year's - Great opportunity to build technology reporter relationships - You do not have to record and enter time at this agency

Cons

The work is entirely tactical and not at all strategic. The firm represents its success to clients in the number of stories placed and so the day to day is composed almost entirely of pitching. At one point I was told that the expectation was that I would come up with and push out two proactive pitches a week per client if they did not have news to announce - it was very alienating for my reporter contacts and personally stressful for me to constantly be coming up with pitches with no news or new content. Further, clients are encouraged to take any interview secured, regardless of whether the publication or topic is beneficial to the client's business ROI (and without regard to whether there's a potential risk in giving the interview). Last, the digital department is not at all integrated with the PR teams and there is no opportunity to plan and carry out integrated outreach campaigns, events, online activations or really anything that deviates from smile and dial traditional media outreach activities - it's clear that the founders do not come from a PR background and don't have a robust understanding of the services that other firms offer. As an employee, the work is not challenging or engaging on an intellectual level.

3
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