Pros
From 1999 – Sept 2019 • a remarkable place to work, a place where team players felt valued by management • so much encouragement to promote female leadership roles • “door open” policy from my line management • Wonderful interaction with most of the client engagement partners and senior management • Very complex work but enjoyable, really encouraged to challenge ourselves • Work hard “family” culture to get difficult projects completed often with skeleton resources than needed I wanted to give the company 5 stars based on how it used to be but because of the new bullying leadership that took over, it is a lone star from me.
Cons
Sept 2019 – until departure First, I really want to thank everyone who very courageously submitted a review about their recent experience with this company. You have greatly inspired me to speak up. I hope this encourages others to do the same. I initially thought about posting a review shortly after I departed but such was the level of sustained harassment and bullying I endured while I was at the company…. I decided to try and put it out of my mind but it stopped me from functioning. The COO was such aggressive person his ability to communicate was downright neanderthal. Ranging from passive aggression to just plain rude. A few months after departing my health got so bad that my family arranged for a councillor to help me as I was really at a crossroads. They diagnosed me with PTSD, in some ways it was a relief and it helped me to come to terms. Thankfully I now have a new job and I am slowly getting back in the saddle. The final straw which encouraged me to write this review was because I was called by a recruiter, one I know very well who told me the new partner in charge and FRA HR team were telling recruiters the reason so may people were fired from the company was because they were poor performers and not “polished” enough for FRA’s new image. I was stunned by this particularly as many of us had mutual non disparagement clauses in our exit contracts which were forced on us under extreme pressure in front of “the firing squad,” more on them later. I thought my experience was a one off and really started to believe I was at fault but when I read about the horrific experience of others at the hands of the “firing squad” I felt compelled to speak up, particularly as so many of the old brigade partners and senior directors we respected looked the other way when all of this was happening? Hello, guys why did you not intervene? I suspect deep down if you are honest you just wanted to keep your heads down and look after number one since there is a pandemic going on and the company has been haemorrhaging employees. This kind of look the other way behaviour happened before with the “Me Too” movement, so perhaps one day you will have the courage to speak up about what you saw and how your fellow junior reports were bullied and abused. The 3 founding partners (who are lovely by the way) must also take responsibility for what has happened: 1. How did their company become so toxic, allowing bullying to be used as a weapon to force people to crack and remove them from your company? 2. How can a company with almost 20 years of stellar industry reputation ruin their image in the space of 12 months? 3. How can the current consultancy of the year winner be probably only eligible for at best a “rear of the year” award in 2021. 4. If all of the “poor performers” who served your partnership so diligently for so many years were really that terrible why has the firm been nominated for and won so many consultancy of the year awards in the last 4 years? How about the terrific feedback from your clients that you loved to share with us by email? 5. Why did you turn a blind eye to so much blatant bullying in your company, when your core values specifically objected to such behaviour? Is it because we were soon to be ex-employees, therefore our dignity and feelings did not matter to you? 6. If the “poor performers” were so bad why have so many been snapped up instantly by your global competitors? 7. For a company that advocates so much about data privacy, how could you let your new partner humiliate staff in correspondence using language such as “we are watching you and know what you are doing” this creates distrust. Lots of questions but all the answers point to the same reason. It is because you dropped the ball by appointing two toxic senior leaders. One new partner hire and one you promoted to COO. Both out of their depth and both not fit to lead, they picked apart your business. It is they who started the new culture of bullying, spying and paranoia. Like sending menacing messages “we are watching what you do” or working from home is a privilege. I sure felt privileged working many nights at 01am! You also hired a chief growth officer (CGO) that no one (even most of the partners) knew what that person was meant to do. I used to watch her come into the office and think to myself oh my? The CGO had no remit and ironically joined the soon to be notorious “firing squad” and flew around the FRA global network with the COO who thought he was Clooney from the film “Up in the Air”. He was less Clooney and more Looney. The “firing squad’s” main objective was to cleanse the firm of anyone who dared to have an opinion that differed from the new leadership. There are several parallels that can be drawn. 1. So many of our colleagues including myself were rounded up and vanished. They told us how worthless we were, made us feel subhuman. Is this any way to treat loyal staff, who were once so proud of this family company and wanted it to succeed? 2. Some of the things you did to force us from the business was amoral and probably illegal, but you did it with such menace that one by one we complied. We know you bullied and tried to coerce our French colleagues into breaching French employment laws and when that didn’t work, the “firing squad” came for them. 3. When we left it was through a trap door and straight into the trash. We were never allowed to say goodbye to our “FRA family”. You tried to erase every part of our being like we were rats. 4. Those that were left behind (and not hired by the new leadership) did so under the mantra that hopefully one day work would make them free and that they would be no longer bullied if they complied with your ridiculous policies. Sadly, this did not happen and one by one the “firing squad” came for them. 5. You created a culture of spies to do your dirty work and eventually left the spies at the mercy of the “firing squad” to systematically tear apart family groups, stripping them of all dignity. Firing people actually became pleasurable . On the data side it became everyone not born to the new leadership, they had to go because they couldn’t be trusted. 6. Ironically once the genocide had paused and the “firing squad” had ran out of victims, they had to turn their guns on themselves. The Looney became the baloney. You literally hired people to fire people, this was the only thing they became good at. Since it was clear they had no skills to do their titled roles and once they had fired everyone, you fired them too!! Caution, the damage this has done to your company reputation will live on for a very long time. Even though you tried to hide your wicked deeds and silence us with the tangled words of your lawyers. It seems your new partner and HR folks are incapable of maintaining the same discretion that you expect us to keep. It shows a great lack of respect, human decency, empathy, I could go on. Therefore, I encourage others who were humiliated to speak the truth, here on these forums, so that others may learn more about the dirty, ugly culture that now grips this company. It is one very public dirty stain that you cannot eradicate. In conclusion I shed a tear for my colleagues and brilliant managers that you cruelly tossed aside. I wish them every success in their new jobs. I take comfort that they are now free from all the lies your new partner told to damage their reputations. I am glad they are free from the spying, the mistrust and backstabbing that became the new 2020 culture at FRA. I also take comfort that one day Vishnu will reset the balance. Hopefully like COVID this new virus that swept through FRA will be one day vaccinated. Peace and love to my dear vanished ones
