Overworked, underpaid and strange culture - Senior Consultant Q5 Employee Review

We’re sorry you had such a miserable time at Q5. Your long list of cons and “1 star” review leaves us in no doubt that you disliked every cultural aspect of the business. That’s a tough place to find yourself … and we’re sad to hear it. Based on some of the things you mention here – our London office not having ‘enough space’ (which has been remedied in 2023 with the addition of new space in Millbank Tower), training and development being ‘poor’ (our L&D offer has been bolstered in 2023 both within Q5 and across our TTA sister firms) – it indicates that you left Q5 a year or so ago. From the point of view of “office working” and training programmes, it’s important to consider the 2021/22 period; we were working through the impact of the pandemic. We had to restrict some of the more fun, impactful training and development interventions in place before Covid (eg face to face training across our 6 European sister firms), for very obvious reasons. Fortunately, the last 12 months has seen us resume all our face-to-face development programmes, and put in place a full-time Head of L&D. They work -- as do the wider People team -- incredibly hard to make sure everyone has access to excellent developmental opportunities. Combined with the pan-European training we have in place with our TTA sister firms, I think Q5 offers compelling developmental offer opportunities for a company of our size. We’re a small, independent firm, not a FTSE 100 company. In terms of reward, Q5’s compensation and bonus structure is benchmarked every year. Our “total reward” -- which includes a generous profit-related bonus for high-performing consultants -- is highly competitive. We know this – as it’s informed by the external data we receive. We don’t promote people through “favouritism” … your colleagues (women and men) will have succeeded through their focus, their dedication and their talent. Whilst there are always things we can improve at Q5, your depiction of a company that struggles with ‘sexist behaviour’, alcohol issues and “micro aggressions towards female members of staff” is hard to reconcile with the reality of life at Q5, described more joyously by others on this site. We have strived – over many years -- to foster a community that has many amazing, talented women in leadership roles. Two of our co-founders are women. To my knowledge, no leader (he / she / they) at Q5 has tolerated any sexist behaviour. Our North American business is headed up by a woman partner, our Australian business is headed up by a woman partner, our Middle Eastern business is headed up by a woman partner – in short, 3 out of our 4 main Geographic Regions are led by women. Three of our prominent practice areas are led by women (Infrastructure, Public Sector and Organisation Development & Culture), our “Pop Up / Foundation” team is led by a woman director, and three out of our four business functions — Marketing, Finance and HR — are led by women directors. Furthermore, the fastest Analyst-to-Partner journey in our firm’s history has been achieved by a woman. This is Q5. That said, whilst I find your experience hard to recognise, your explicit reference to “sexist” behaviour and “drinking culture” concerns me. As you'll know, there is something called the 'Integrity Line' at Q5 -- an anonymous way to raise sensitive issues to our People Director and a couple of our Wellbeing officers. You haven't used this line to raise any concerns. However, if there's a specific incident that’s taken place, or a particular person (or people) who have bullied or harassed you, then I encourage you to report it (or them). This can of course be done anonymously.