C space will burn you out - Anonymous employee C Space Employee Review

Thank you for posting your feedback about your time with C Space. Working on collaborative teams for visible, industry leading clients to embed the voice of the customer across all business, marketing and product strategy can be an amazing career choice -- we’d argue not only for the first few years of one’s career but at all stages. And yes we are very proud that both our President in the Americas, Jessica DeVlieger and Managing Director in London, Kathryn Blanchard are female. I’m very sorry to hear that you feel there are internal challenges that have created inordinate stress, that management is not accountable to the same standards, doesn’t communicate genuinely or clearly, or is over-focused on selling our unique offering. You are a current employee it sounds like, so I encourage you to speak with your reporting manager about your concerns, and/or come talk to me or anyone in People & Ops. I can offer you and others reading a few thoughts in response for now. Each week we have two staff meetings (one global, one Americas) to share our numbers and spotlight the unique and amazing work our teams are doing, and those videos are then posted on The Spot, our internal communications platform with additional written summaries. There we also have: daily postings on our values and recognition page where employees share their genuine appreciation for each other, our Diversity Equity and Inclusion site with active Allies group leading the way, valuable client resources to help with specific work challenges, as well a comments section for individual queries. We also run engagement questions quarterly in our people development platform, Bridge. We offer daily yoga and have hosted speakers even prior to COVID that shared some of the latest on mental health strategies. We even have a dedicated site relating to all the new issues that have emerged in the COVID-era to make sure people know how to take advantage of new national and local offerings (including leaves) given how important mental and physical health are in this uncertain time. Certainly working in a client and professional services business can involve longer hours at times but it shouldn’t be the rule. I highly recommend you are transparent about this if that is your experience, to see if there are modifications that can be made to help you achieve better balance. Over 20% of our staff are taking advantage of our flexible work arrangements, even before the COVID era. Every C Space employee should feel comfortable raising their concerns to their manager and others that can help, and then take responsibility to make changes. I hope you can be one of them, and again, encourage you to come forward to myself or anyone on the People Team for a private conversation if you feel at all stuck in how to make things better for yourself. Thank you for your hard work for C Space!