Senior leadership needs more compassion - Anonymous employee Sage Employee Review

2.0
Oct 23, 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

When I first joined I felt like it was a good place to work but it feels like it’s been slowly going downhill ever since largely due to decisions taken at the very top. The benefits are still quite good (although not exceptional) and there are a lot of really passionate and hardworking people at Sage. You get 5 days a year for volunteering which is very generous and definitely something that Sage should get praised for. It used to be quite a flexible place to work at but sadly this is now changing. I still think it’s a good place to progress your career but the biggest advantage when I first joined was flexibility and hybrid working.

Cons

There have been a lot of points of frustration recently. Firstly, it’s frustrating that you don’t get a 100% of your bonus even if you perform very well purely because Sage doesn’t meet its internal targets which aren’t revealed to us. Secondly, the work can be tough and demanding which in the past was rewarded by great flexibility. Finally, I find the attitude of the senior leadership really inappropriate. The CEO recently said that we should be careful what we put in our glassdoor reviews as our customers read them while adding he’s ‘not trying to censor anything’. Well, I’d be careful with how you phrase these kinds of statements because to me it was clearly to discourage people from posting their honest opinions. But this attitude is best demonstrated by the recent announcement of the ‘return to office 3 days a week’ policy. When it was first announced, the senior leader on the call clearly got irritated by people asking questions and expressing legitimate concerns. Instead of trying to be more compassionate, the tone was aggressive and he clearly decided to double down on the rhetoric with phrases along the lines of ‘the decision has been made’. If you’re openly saying you’re not interested in feedback, it comes across as though you don’t respect your colleagues. We’ve also been discouraged from discussing this in an open manner in general. In the official email, we were made to feel as though we should be grateful that we’re not going back to the office 5 days a week but only 3. Some people will inevitably have to quit as they live too far and this happened very suddenly but perhaps this was the intent behind this all along. I can’t think of any better reason when the current hybrid model works very well, we don’t have enough space in offices and many teams are based in several countries. This means that some people will literally be coming to the office to spend the whole day on teams calls with their colleagues abroad.

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Sage Response
1y
We appreciate your feedback and have read through your comments. Please note that our hybrid working approach is an important element of the way we work at Sage that is complemented by other benefits such as paid time to volunteer, the ability to work away for up to 10 weeks a year and free well-being support tools. We recently also answered several colleagues' questions about the new 3-day policy. In doing so, we've shed more light on how colleagues will be supported as they adhere to our updated hybrid structure. More information about what we offer can be found here https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Benefits/Sage-United-Kingdom-Benefits-EI_IE1150.0,4_IL.5,19_IN2.htm - Thanks for taking the time to leave your review. We’ll continue to work hard to improve how we enable colleagues to thrive.

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Cons

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1.0
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Pros

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Cons

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