Pros
Gympass is a great concept and is a high growth company, having expanded into 14 countries in under 6 years. It definitely has potential to do very well. The London office is located within a WeWork - great location, facilities and opportunity to network with other startups. I worked with a great team of smart, ambitious people and joined at a time when we were still putting processes in place and trying new things which also meant that I had the opportunity to get involved in other areas of the business. The end of month wrap ups + pizza/drinks are great and a very good way for all the teams to update the whole office on achievements made in the last month, come together to celebrate successes and mention upcoming plans and initiatives everyone is working on. They have recently implemented some good initiatives - wellness club, internal newsletters, new learning platform, focus on D&I after global survey.
Cons
The company is ruthless in how it treats its people which is ironic considering they are promoting employee wellbeing to their clients. Gympass spend majority of their time preaching about employee engagement, retention tools etc. but it seems they don't know how to apply these concepts internally. It’s the kind of place where if you tell management, you have mental health issues - not only will they not have any empathy but they will use this as an opportunity to bring up your targets and put more pressure on you. At the same time they are holding talks on how it is the company’s responsibility to look after its people in terms of physical and mental wellbeing… Of course, business needs are a priority but there is a lack of human touch in the way they deal with issues and treat their people - ranging from favouritism by management towards certain employees, lack of independence/confidentially from HR, management not being open to discussion. They are not open to opposing viewpoints and have an attitude of sweeping things under the rug. Meritocracy - practice both ends - not just punishment Gympass is an organisation which prides itself on being meritocratic. It’s off-putting when you watch your colleagues have to struggle and argue their case for promotion when they’ve deserved it months ago and really management should have recognised and rewarded this by now. On the other end, they are quick to pick up on people who are underperforming and use this meritocracy to “let go of people” (as they so clearly outline in their values) without providing the support and training to help people improve. There is not really any organic growth in terms of career progression as you would expect from a typical startup as the general tendency has been to replicate the structure in Brazil which has resulted in hiring externally rather than promoting within. Gympass is very much a scale up now with a lot of decisions which seem to be made at the European HQ in Madrid. Diversity & Inclusion Across the company there is a general theme of it being Brazil centric (most senior leaders globally being Brazilian) and the lack of women. Globally there is only one female country manager and very few women in other leadership positions and even then usually only in Marketing/Launch/HR which is then reflected in the teams. Gympass is now starting to focus on this initiative company-wide but more needs to be done to recruit more women across all teams and retain them. Lack of trust & transparency - being honest goes a long way. There seems to be somewhat of a lack of respect and professionalism by management. It was frankly quite shocking to raise an issue with management where I was trying to understand why I was not given the same exposure as some of my peers even when I was over-performing compared to them. Not only was I not given a satisfactory answer but I was in fact accused of being “childish” by a manager who apparently has 10 years of experience.
