A Toxic Working Culture - Anonymous employee M Squared Lasers Employee Review

I think that the cons of M Squared can be split into two categories - one, the amateur day-to-day operations within the company and two, the poor treatment of staff. Make no mistake that both are down to terrible management from the very top. I’ll start with the operational downfalls before moving on to the staff treatment. Some of the operational decisions are baffling. The procurement team went from four employees to zero in the space of 6 months, and there was no transition plan put in place with regards to handovers. It was not until the final employee left that management actually realised that they should probably start to consider filling the vacant roles with new people. As a previous review correctly mentioned, the owners got rid of HR because they were fed up of the sole HR employee communicating the genuine grievances of many of the employees, and left a company of over 100 employees without any formal HR personnel. Although, they are quite happy to employ not one, but two full-time members on their legal team, which tells you where their priorities lie. Plans change quite literally on a minute-by-minute basis, which really goes to show that there is no operational plan at all. For example, decisions on shipments of lasers flip-flop and change until the last minute, at which point a decision is made and an engineer has to quickly package a laser system within minutes, before the delivery van arrives to collect the box. Of course, this process then has to be hurried and sometimes parts are not boxed by mistake - naturally the blame for this falls upon the competent individuals with 5+ years experience of boxing the lasers who have to perform an impossible task, while management take no responsibility for their carelessness. Through cronyism and nepotism, the CEO surrounds himself with ‘yes’ men who have no interest in listening to the concerns of the employees below them. Micromanagement is the result. Many of the team managers have little to no experience with the products or systems that their teams use. This makes for frustrating experiences for the team members, who have to explain and justify their everyday actions when they themselves have the knowledge and know-how to lead the teams in a more competent manner. Health and safety is not taken seriously enough. On far too many occasions I witnessed people lifting optical tables weighing hundreds of kilograms without any mechanical assistance. These instances would be noted to members of senior management who failed to act, and so these lifting jobs continued year after year. The transport of optical tables between delivery trucks and labs is a common sight in laser production facilities and end-user universities around the world, and it's standard knowledge that these lifts should be performed by mechanical apparatus. Also on the issue of health and safety, assigned first-aiders would leave the company, but no new first-aider would be trained to take their place. At one point, all of the company's first-aiders had left - the first leaver having left years before - leaving absolutely no dedicated first-aider in a building with 60+ employees. Management take no responsibility when it comes to waste management and recycling - this had been raised in the past and the response was simply that an employee at low level should volunteer themselves to be the one to kick-start a proper recycling system. There is zero empathy from senior management towards employees, which sometimes falls under downright bullying. A perfect example of this was when a laser engineer was working abroad for a few days and unfortunately had their rental car broken into, with personal belongings stolen. An insurance claim was correctly and competently opened by the person who usually deals with this sort of thing, but the claim was mysteriously pulled from them one day with no notice. The engineer brought up the issue with more senior staff members who refused to provide any evidence as to why the claim was pulled. When the engineer asked for a copy of the company’s insurance policy for overseas work, they were refused access to this. The engineer was then told off for continuing to raise the issue and was threatened with no promotions in the future. This employee had given up a lot of free time over the years to travel abroad for the company and this was how M Squared repaid them. Misogyny is a serious issue, and unfortunately comes from the very top of the management structure. Female members of staff who worked competently in their roles for 5+ years would find themselves training new male members in their team with identical job titles and everyday roles, but the males would enter into the role on a higher salary. And no - the males did not come from some high-ranking role in their previous job to warrant this discrepancy between salaries. When comparing like-for-like scenarios where minor issues would occur, some managers would clearly raise their voice and shout at female members of staff, but speak far more reasonably to male members. An alarmingly low number of females are promoted to more senior positions, despite many of them putting in many years worth of outstanding service. Such positions are filled by a male, often with a lack of experience for the given role. A handful of females left the company over a 15 month period and more than one of them cited sexism as a major reason for their exit. These issues have been raised to management on more than one occasion by a number of people, including current male members of staff, but nothing has been done about it - no internal investigations, no anonymous questionnaires sent out to members of staff to gauge the seriousness of the problem. Nothing. To conclude, I’d mention that M Squared looks like a good company from the outside. Their marketing is pristine and they show themselves off as a revolutionary company. Unfortunately, this is all style and no substance. They are continuing to lose first-class workers with many years of experience who are fed up with the toxic culture, and there is no sign of this stopping any time soon.