- Toxic, horrible work environment – I was warned about how bad it was by mutual friends of current and former staff members, but I thought it couldn’t possibly be as terrible as they were saying. I was very wrong; it is so much worse. The job is completely thankless – you get no recognition when things are going well (except the very occasional forced “yeah thanks” from management when you are massively exceeding targets), but the second something drops below their standards, you’ll never hear the end of it. There is an ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality between the teams, brought on entirely by the managers. Everything is made to be a competition; management bad-mouths other teams and makes us feel as though we are all against each other. The junior staff from each team ended up talking and resolving the conflict because, surprise surprise, none of us actually have an issue with each other, it was all lies and insecurities projected by the managers.
- On that note, management is absolutely atrocious and has no regard for employee wellbeing. Unempathetic, incompetent, unprofessional people are in positions of power within a very heavily hierarchical company structure, where the people at the bottom get treated like dirt and the ones at the top take all the credit for their hard work. If you voice any concerns, you will be told that “all you do is complain” and “you are too emotional”. They funnel money into superficial acts like ‘Free coffee for RUOK day!’ but then blatantly ignore any staff who are struggling. Monash HR also sides heavily with management and takes everything they say as fact, so complaints are never resolved and there is very little support if you are having issues.
- Senior staff pick favourites and least favourites (based on absolutely nothing but their own internalised issues) and bully the people they don’t like. I am the third person to be bullied out of this place by the same person (that I know of), and at least three more have left because of the horrible environment created by management. The staff turnover rate is a strong indication of how awful it is to work here; there were four farewells in my first week of working here and a steady stream of others leaving in the months following. For a relatively small company, it reflects very poorly having so many people leaving in such quick succession. Even the people who stay complain about how bad it is to work here, but the pay is good (and only gets better the longer you stay) so it’s easy to get stuck here.
- Many of the lab staff will do the absolute minimum, disappear for hour-long coffee breaks (on the clock), sit around and chat and take as long as humanly possible to complete their tasks, leaving a few people to do all of the work. This means that, if you are actually hardworking, your days will be chaotic, and you will often go hours with no water or toilet breaks.
- The job itself is pretty terrible. They advertise it as “Research Officer”, but it is 99% manual labour in hot, humid rooms and 1% filling out databases. They definitely embellish it in the job description and interview. You leave every day sweaty, exhausted and dreading the next day. There are very strict biosecurity protocols (fair enough), but every time there is a breach, several new protocols get added and every task ends up taking 10x longer than it needs to. These breaches are happening more and more frequently because there are so many things you have to remember, people are tired and overworked, and it is almost impossible to keep up with all of the changes. You also have to wear long pants and a lab coat with the sleeves fully rolled down (no visible ankles or wrists allowed, god forbid you have any airflow to your extremities), which isn't terrible until you have been lifting heavy trays in 28°C, 55% humidity rooms for three hours with only one small fan in the back corner to cool you down. They also refused to buy us equipment we needed to do the job safely and correctly because we can’t “waste money”, and then when there were issues due to the lack of proper equipment, we got in trouble for not asking for the equipment we needed...
This place is absolutely not worth the stress, I wish I never accepted the job. It only took me 2 months to absolutely despise coming to work and, having been stuck there for over a year due to covid, I leave full of anger and resentment. If you are considering taking a job here, don’t.
