The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association reviews

Appalling leadership at a national level - disconnected and lacking ability to connect with wider workforce Cliques and silos at every turn no accountability for decisions or transparency or co-production in evidence at all Limited understanding by national and regional senior staff of the services that have been created or how they operate on the ground no one seems to be able to drive change in a way that is strategic and logical, its a mess, and completely disconnected in every area of the business Staff promoted into leadership roles who do not have the skills, knowledge or understanding to do the roles Exceptionally poor / non existent leadership at a regional level Siloed working poor use of resources / money wasted at every turn no access to learning and development and not supported to access external learning and development entirely focussed on dogs, and that now is not the core of the business poor working environments which are unacceptably noisy and unwelcoming bad communication poor treatment of key staff on the ground who have no one to turn to when problems arise un-acceptable and un-realistic workloads with no solutions offered No HR support for managers who have to deal with a constant and wide range of issues they are not trained to undertake and have no proper support in dealing with inadequate training and inductions for staff despite relentless recruitment all resources and comms are focused on dogs, when other services have far greater outputs and successes and are completely ignored and under-resourced

- If you love that secondary school environment where there’s bullies, gossiping, egotistical people and pettiness, then this is the place for you. - Mental health isn’t taken seriously enough. The organisation thinks that putting on a few wellbeing seminars is the answer to people’s declining mental wellbeing rather than taking a real hard look at why we’re so mentally drained and exhausted in the first place. - If you have an issue with the way things are done then for the love of god, keep it to yourself. Just remember, in this place, you are the problem and Guide Dogs is perfect. - Senior management needs a complete overhaul to weed out the egotistic, image obsessed, toxic people. There’s a real sense of us and them, because the lower levelled colleagues are generally good people who aren’t out to get you. - Guide Dogs is a sinking ship, and management will step on you to make sure their head stays above the surface. This is your warning, DO NOT WORK HERE.