A-SAFE reviews

2.6

38% would recommend to a friend

(87 total reviews)
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James Smith, Luke Smith

Not enough data to show CEO approval

32% positive business outlook

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.

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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
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.

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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 14, 2021

If there was a 0 score option i'd have picked that

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great product and some great people

Cons

Management style/team, bullying culture, failure to treat employees as human beings, failure of owners to listen to staff feedback when they leave the company in droves (or if they do listen they must be ignoring it) that's if anybody even asks for it.

Viewing 25 - 27 of 87 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.