Working at this charity has had a long lasting detrimental impact on my mental and physical health. As a high performer I could not fathom why my manager suddenly started making my job and life impossible. The manager seemed to be only focused on self-preservation and felt threatened by my successes, so started putting up barriers in everything I did. I also had to be at mercy of my manager’s moods - they could be unpredictable, voices raised, eyes rolled, meetings cancelled for no apparent reason. It was very confusing to me because I just wanted to do my job well.
Unfortunately, working at Prostate Cancer involved a lot of backstabbing, politics, smoking downstairs with the right people, gossiping, begging for pay rises, holding people over barrels, blackmailing, being mates/going to the pub with the right people etc. For someone who wants to come to work to do their job this can be really exhausting and unnecessary, however unfortunately my manager thrived on that approach.
As was raised in other reviews - you may enjoy working here if you are white, British, able-bodied and ideally without caring responsibilities. That sets you up in good stead for flexible working requests, pay negotiations, flexility to do your job how you see fit and generally fit in. If you don’t fit that profile - prepare to be excluded from everything, marginalised, blamed for everything and eventually pushed out (to be replaced by someone White British). The charity has all these lovely football and reading clubs etc and on paper “everyone is welcome” but in reality you are only welcome if you fit the bill of a 25-35 year old white British person with a name like Holly or Jenny or Sam, else you can come, of course, but no one will talk to you. The people who work there seem delusional about how “inclusive” and “kind” they are when really if they look at themselves and people they call their friends and colleagues - they almost always look and talk the same.
The decisions made by leadership are very slow, risk averse and driven by fear (of potential legislation, of GDPR breaches and other unlikely events) rather than common sense. Team members who promote scaremongering of these unlikely scenarios seem to be received very well. Salaries have stagnated and haven’t changed since 2018 falling a long way behind the market. Promotions on merit don’t exist, but promotions for people whose managers are pushy/matey with the right directors etc are commonplace.
Overall, the build up of unnecessary stress and bullying I experienced at this charity, mostly at the hands of a middle manager who did nothing and feared losing their job as a consequence, caused me lasting mental and physical health damage that may take years to repair. I am very happy to have moved on from the charity and knowing what I know now, I would never have joined it.
