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      A-SAFE

      Engaged Employer

      A-SAFE reviews

      2.6

      38% would recommend to a friend

      (87 total reviews)
      avatar

      James Smith, Luke Smith

      Not enough data to show CEO approval

      32% positive business outlook

      Ratings by demographic groups

      A-SAFE has an employee rating of 2.6 out of 5 stars, based on 87 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The A-SAFE employee rating is 25% below average for employers within the Manufacturing industry (3.5 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      87 reviews
      1.0
      Jun 25, 2019

      Disappointing

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Made friends for life Learnt positive management skills and lessons from being mismanaged

      Cons

      A-SAFE used to be a brilliant place to work and had a really positive family-run business culture/feeling. The original owner and his wife are lovely people. Unfortunately, the transition to becoming more corporate and established in multiple global markets has taken precedence over internal improvements. During this time, the business has completely neglected to implement proper HR policies to drive employee morale, create a desirable working culture and protect the wellbeing of staff. Mid-level managers are well out of their depth, with a serious lack of knowledge on people management and various specialisms within their own departments – certainly within the marketing team. As echoed on various reviews, the level of micromanagement was intolerable as an employee and not something that people should have to deal with in any capacity at work. Managers are given far too much control, regularly using personal opinions and emotions to manipulate situations and throw hardworking employees under the bus to protect their own mistakes. I regretfully witnessed managers denying certain work-related agreements and conversations had taken place on several occasions, potentially very damaging to people’s professional confidence/mental health. A-SAFE need to acknowledge the implications of management purposely creating scenarios where they want people to fail and gradually bully them out of their roles. Emails asking for confirmation on work or suggestions for improvement would be purposely ignored so there was no digital trail to refer to if questions were asked at a later date. 121s were constantly cancelled leaving no real time to discuss work, allowing issues to remain unresolved and gradually worsen. Lastly, there are little development plans in place for progressing your career with A-SAFE as they consider most members of staff to be replaceable – a very questionable approach to have towards your employees. The current owners MUST have an idea of what is happening and how damaging treating people in this way is for the company. For some reason though, they will not step in to help employees that are willing to go above and beyond to progress the business.

      avatar
      A-SAFE Response
      6y
      Thank you for your feedback and it’s great to hear that you made some great friends during your time at A-SAFE. Due to our extraordinary year-on-year growth, we accept we have experienced growing pains as any business would; however, we are striving to improve closer working and communication around the business, and this is something at the very top of our agenda as we continue our rapid business success. Thank you for your feedback on development plans for progressing your career, and I’m sorry to hear your view of this was not positive. I can confirm we have supported 20% of all our employees through professional studies, whether that is to get their accountancy qualifications, HR professional qualifications or a degree in engineering. We also support our staff with professional membership fees and encourage continuous professional development through different types of internal and external training. We have also had an 80% conversion rate of apprenticeships to full-time positions, and are in process of setting up the A-SAFE Apprenticeship Academy which will see our first cohort of apprentices in 2020. We are also just about to invest heavily in a project to engage with employees on our culture and how this can be improved. We understand there are things we can do better and we are always grateful for honest and detailed feedback.
      1.0
      Jun 25, 2019

      If you value your sanity - do NOT do it!

      Marketing
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Most of the people within the marketing team (with the exception of one, two including the top of the marketing chain) were amazing and I've made some fantastic, lasting friendships.

      Cons

      The lack of trust and micromanagement from the top of the marketing tree and owners is suffocating. Said people literally don’t know whether they are coming or going and you will receive a different answer to the same question/s on a regular basis and never any clear instructions for anything, ever. The strategy for pieces of work and projects changes by the second so it's impossible for you to make any kind of headway with work. You find that most of the time, you are in fact teaching them how to do the simplest pieces of marketing work or what the purpose of a certain marketing discipline is. You would expect anyone in a senior Marketing position to know the core basics of copywriting, PPC, web management, PR and social media but they don't here, you'd have a better chance of getting more sense and direction from a monkey. The environment is pernicious and there is zero morale amongst staff members. And the more worrying thing is that this is company wide and not just isolated to the marketing team. The company has the biggest staff turnover I have ever known and they just don't seem to care. If you have a different opinion to the Owners or senior management then forget it, it won't be listened too or taken on board. The salaries are a joke too, doesn't matter what department or position you are in, they pay grossly under the industry average. Combine this with everything else and no wonder everyone is miserable. The list of cons is quite literally endless, work here at your peril! You would get a much better deal if you sold your soul to the devil.

      avatar
      A-SAFE Response
      6y
      Thank you for your feedback. You have gone into a lot of detail specific to a particular area of the business which can’t be commented on individually, but I would like to address some of the company-wide comments you make. We would like to assure anyone reading this review that our strategy is not changing all the time. We review and refocus priorities, which gives us the agility to give our customers what they need when they want it. We have a great formula for success, which delivers great results as our performance shows. I would like to point out that our people are the key factor in our proven success, and at the heart of this lie our senior management team. These people have the skills and attitudes to lead the business in this rapid period of growth which is why we trust in them, the work they do and the decisions they make. Regarding micromanagement – we don’t have the resources to do this and it isn’t the A-SAFE way. We want our staff to use their initiative and creativity. However, we will get more involved to support someone where there are some problems around delivering results. This is good, supportive people management and is intended and usually seen as a positive and welcome input. The sort of people who excel at A-SAFE are agile, open to change and new ideas and want to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. So, if you are a prospective candidate taking a look at us, hopefully this will resonate with you. We have a number of ways in which we listen to staff. From the top down, anyone can (and people certainly do) express a view or idea and it will be listened to. This resource is being strengthened by our employee engagement survey which gives us feedback on a variety of areas. We also encourage managers to have regular one-to-ones with their team and everyone has a formal performance appraisal. We keep close to what good employers are doing to support their people to be their best and we are always looking to improve on our employee offering.
      1.0
      Jun 21, 2019

      Don't do it.

      Marketing
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      I met some amazing people working here which is the only positive.

      Cons

      Where to start? Inherently ambiguous instructions from the top of the marketing team, stifling micromanagement, a total lack of focus with a different plan for the same piece of work each week, management bottlenecking important pieces of work despite repeated requests to review, 121 meetings were 'essential' yet cancelled every week meaning important issues couldn't be resolved and work couldn't progress, the management style created a toxic and hostile working environment that destroyed what little morale was left in the department.. I could sit here all day and continue, but I won't waste my time. Just like A-SAFE don't waste their time gathering valuable feedback from outgoing members of staff to improve the culture and find out what's really going on within each department - a huge shame.

      avatar
      A-SAFE Response
      6y
      Thank you for your review. We are sorry your experience with A-SAFE wasn’t everything you hoped for. You raise some points around ways of working which are at a very micro level and this isn’t really the forum to discuss these. However, we would just like to assure you that we do gather feedback and welcome this in whatever format. For example, all exit interviews are sent directly to the Managing Directors. We are also about to launch our first Employee Engagement Survey. We identify trends in feedback and take action in light of these. We have had phenomenal growth and success over the past 5 years and have more than trebled the size of the business. Inevitably, we won’t get everything right and we recognise there are always learning points and room for improvement and we are more than willing to make improvements as we continue to grow. We respect individual views expressed but have to take these in the context of the overall organisation. We are proud of our employees who work very hard and flexibly to deliver our ongoing success and growth.
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      ReviewsA-SAFE reviews

      Glassdoor has 97 A-SAFE reviews submitted anonymously by A-SAFE employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if A-SAFE is right for you.