Pros
There was absolutely nothing at all about this job that redeemed it or that would have kept me here. It was an absolutely horrendous, depressing, debilitating experience. Leaving was the most enormous weight off my shoulders.
Cons
Wages are appalling, I don't know how anybody can live on this kind of money without starving to death. You are paid only a meagre school leaver's wage at management level and there is no such thing as a pay rise. I only took this job out of absolute desperation after becoming unemployed and never had any intention of staying for the long term, but once my first day here came around and I saw the conditions that people had to work in, it became a race against time to get out and I lasted just over 4 months before resigning. Working here has been the single most awful experience of my entire life. There is no management. I have not met any person in this entire organisation who possesses a single real world management skill. Brainless, clueless, talentless idiots. 'Managers' are all promoted within if their face fits and if they impress the right people by brown nosing enough, and without sufficient experience of or training in management, they are then completely reliant on online guidance in order to manage staff. They do not possess the ability or intelligence to make their own decisions or look at cases for what they actually are, God forbid treat staff as human beings or with compassion or empathy - they are all dependent upon reading a page of writing off the intranet and doing exactly what that tells them to, without exception. In fact, if you don't do just that, you are threatened with being managed out for poor behaviour. "You can't do that in the public sector!" is the answer to everything, including giving praise to staff. They think forcing staff to put decorations around their desks and to bake cakes every week will be enough to boost the shockingly low morale. Evidently not!!! "Follow the guidance, check the guidance, everything is in the guidance, the guidance will tell you exactly what to do!" is the approach to management. There is no trace of management. I was consistently told that this guidance is in place to help the company to win the many employment tribunals that they are dragged to - hello, in proper companies there are nowhere near the number of tribunals taking place that HMRC is dealing with because other companies would never treat their staff this appallingly! Bullying, persecuting, harassing and disciplining staff for being off sick and discriminating against the disabled is always going to land you in hot water! The attitude towards disability in this place is absolutely disgusting. Staff are threatened with formal action and made to be too afraid of taking time off work and are then forced to drag themselves in when completely unfit to be doing so. It is embarrassing to constantly deal with complaints from customers because nobody seems to be able to get anything right first time - customer service is absolutely appalling due to insufficient training. If taxpayers could see who was dealing with their affairs on the inside and under what conditions they would be horrified. Literally kids in tracksuits and trainers who have sat in a classroom for 5 weeks and then are expected to go out and adjust the nation's tax codes - hence all the constant mistakes. After this point, the staff are then criticised and micromanaged by controlling plebs on a daily basis, their every move watched on an online system. They are told that everything they do isn't good enough, they must work harder, and yet there is no support or incentive in place to do so. They are told that they are overpaid (£18,500, really?!) and accused of being lazy, taking liberties and just sitting around talking all day when in actual fact they are mostly getting screamed at by angry customers who are frustrated that they've now had to call up for the 12th time because of the constant screw ups that happen on a large scale in this place. How demoralising. The work is so monotonous, boring and unchallenging. It is impossible to feel enthused or inspired. I would have completed all of my duties within the first 20 - 30 minutes of the day and then sit staring into space with nothing to do for the remainder. It was draining and gave me headaches. Work / life balance was absolutely non-existent and I had to work every evening and every Saturday. There are too many employees at management level and it is a waste of public money. Some of these jobs just shouldn't exist at all due to the lack of work to actually do. They could very easily work with less managers. If this was a private company it would have lost the contract long ago for being a waste of resource and generally unfit for purpose. Standards are non-existent. I feel sorry for the people trapped in here who cannot get out as I have done - practically all of them want to. This company is just letting the talented, able and hardworking people walk out of the door because of the way they are treated (abused). Nobody of any worth is ever going to put up with such dire treatment. The next step is to make mass redundancies when they reduce the workforce and close down most of the offices over the years to come in order to save money by opening regional centres in all of the big cities - unfortunately it will be the people at the very bottom who face the chop, ironically also the only ones who are actually busy with any work to do! If you aren't lucky enough to be able to travel to one of the new locations, then you now don't have a job. Thanks for your loyalty! What a way to work! Good riddance!
