Job and company looked promising on paper but everything wrong is due to management. Still take control once you leave.
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Colleagues are a treat! Good first job to have due to high responsibility.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Management, lack of freedom, inadequate communication. In my experience, you are able to approach management but you need to request this via the secretary initially. Very traditional!
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Management needs to improve. Listen to your workers, hear their concerns and points for improvement. Welcome feedback and constructive criticism. It's time to get off the traditional bridge and hop on over to the progressive shore.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, I found it financially difficult to commute back and forth to work on the reduced salary “Kurzarbeit”. After having communicated this to management, I was simply told that no exceptions would be made for me. No reflection of content or feeling, just a response without argumentation. Simply put, the argument of “What I say stays” is in full effect here. Rather unfortunately, they were all the sudden not able to go through with my contract. In my opinion the timing was very unfortunate as this led me to believe that ulterior motives were at play. Of course this is biased on my part, but not a good move. Additionally I was upset that management did not want to communicate this big change with me personally. Instead, HR let me know in the morning while I was making coffee. I had to be the first to seek contact about this matter.
Kommunikation
Work climate between colleagues is great and this is also the case with the human resources department. In contrast, this cannot be said about management. Whether having made it through my probation period or negotiating a new contract, I was always notified via the secretary and not through management. This is normal practice at a large establishment, but from a company that has around 20-30 employees on site, I would expect different. This makes me question managements people skills, quite the irony for a company which specializes in Customer Relationship Management. Communication is via a A-C-B-C-A basis instead of a much more efficient A-B.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
First of all, before discussing the points of improvement I would like to highlight the positives of undertaking a position at the company. The colleagues working there are the most hard working and committed people you will meet. Coffee breaks and lunch breaks were a delight. Everyone there was kind and respectful to each other irrespective of age. At times when you were faced with an issue, your colleagues would happily jump in and help. However, from my short one year spell at the organization, I realized that the root of problems at concertare were with management; a lack of understanding their employees.
Work-Life-Balance
The work hours are fixed; 09:00 – 18:00. There is no possibility for ‘Flex Time’ and if you would like to leave early / start late, you need to provide a valid reason first before having this approved. I once requested to leave 15 min early due to traffic, not surprisingly this was refused.
Interessante Aufgaben
The tasks themselves are quite good however for someone entering the workspace for the first time. You are thrown into the thick of things right away and carry a lot of responsibility which I personally enjoyed. After a while though, things do get repetitive and you find yourself not facing any more challenges. Targets are set quite high which causes a lot of stress for some but I took it positive and used it as an opportunity to showcase my diligence. If I did hit my targets I was never praised but rather posed with the question “Why are we not doing better?”. Feedback is thus not valued in my opinion. When I brought forth suggestions to their practices, I was simply told to carry with their, in my opinion, inefficient mannerisms. Freedom is thus very low and you do not feel very valued. I feel that job rotation would be an effective way to increase job satisfaction and variation, but providing my suggestion is irrelevant as employee feedback is not respected. This will be carried out much in the same way that reviews are not valued. I had to adapt my review twice; initially it was claimed that I was not a real former employee. I personally feel that there is no regard workers.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Working conditions are fine and employees are provided with complimentary snacks and hot beverages. The office is sectioned in different work spaces completely encased in glass walls. I personally felt that this was intimidating and gave an impression of distrust. On two occasions I had to carry out mystery shop visits which in my opinion should never be carried out internally. This can effect the validity of a test and can further produce biased results; not beneficial for a company contracting a project.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
As an intern I would say that the payment was fair. You could have a master degree and be responsible for one of the companies biggest clients, but you were then not paid as such with as argument; “You do not speak the German language”. Additionally, employees do not get paid for overtime. This is of the norm and it seems that colleagues have simply adopted this habituated state.