This place is miserable - Anonymous employee Zeno Group Employee Review

1.0
Dec 1, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great roster of clients, lots of opportunity to touch different businesses and verticals. There is truly a feeling of carving out your own career path with Zeno, if you have a passion for something, you are encouraged to do something with it - whether it's for your own clients or for the agency as a whole.

Cons

Zeno Group is not what it used to be. While management might want to ignore the fact, people are miserable. Half the office is currently actively interviewing. There is only one singular focus now - win more and more new business. It is the one directive and no one cares or pays attention to the ramifications towards existing employees or business. There are more than a few accounts that are now in jeopardy because no one has the time to focus on any one thing or client. Employees are insanely overworked and no one cares....higher level management just gives the same excuse, "This is the PR world" or "This is agency life".....B.S, they create this mess. There are large gaps of missing levels of employees and recruitment tends to stand still. The few people who truly run the agency (not the CEO or MD's) are horrible to work for and with. There is zero respect for anyone's time outside the office - day's off are a joke because you will still have to be on calls and do work. Vacations are interrupted on a regular basis. If one of the SVP's or EVP's decides a project needs to get done, you will be told that the team is working late or even through the night without regard to if you even have the ability to do so - you have to figure out a way to make it work. Higher level management will pay no attention to anything teams do until the last second and then come in and scrap everything and make everyone work through the night to redo entire plans and campaigns. "Perks" or rewards come in the form of a happy hour every now and then where people come grab a beer and then have to go right back to their desks because they have too much work to do. Communication between departments and employees is abysmal and causes various people to be stuck in the middle of horrible situations. Forget personal development, no one gets to go to conferences or any industry events. The agency motto of "Fearless" now means "Just do whatever a client wants, say yes to everything, no matter what it does to anyone inside the agency". There is no looking out for employees anymore, it's fully about the bottom line.

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Zeno Group Response
10y
Thanks so much for your candid review. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us because we are relentless in our pursuit of excellence, both for our clients and especially our employees. We are sorry to learn that your experience working at Zeno has been less than positive, and I would like to have the opportunity to discuss your experience personally so we can learn from it . You can reach me at HR@zenogroup.com. Zeno continues to grow and evolve, and we will continue to strive to be better each day. Thanks again for your feedback.

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Pros

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Cons

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2.0
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Pros

Good foundational PR experience with opportunity to work on cool brands and focus on specific areas of business. There's great work in the pipeline and senior leadership is laying the groundwork for expanded capabilities across practices. Plenty of learning and development opportunities throughout tenure and internal tools to grow professional skills.

Cons

Terrible work culture and some middle managers who are self-concerned/not invested in supporting young talent. Junior employees are overworked and underpaid. Did not feel set up for success in my role and felt there was a lot of favoritism within the company.

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