- Internal promotions are very scarce and the company has a habit of promoting large groups on trial secondments only to then end secondments regardless of performance once the staff they rush to recruit inevitably burn out. What they will offer is ‘horizontal progression’ in which you pick up more responsibility for no more compensation and you’ll take it all in the hopes that you’ll be selected as a candidate for secondment. It’s a very vicious cycle that I’ve seen many people leave because of.
- Payroll is regularly incorrect, be it missing hours or outright ‘losing’ employees that have had no time off
- A little cliche but you definitely feel like a number, you’re micromanaged into feeling as though the world will come crumbling down if you do what’s right by your customer rather than what your line manager needs for their targets (from an agent and TL perspective alike)
- I’ve seen elsewhere that Firstsource provide comprehensive training when becoming a Team Leader, I’d like to set the record straight and say that’s objectively untrue. I became a Team Leader and received no training and little guidance on what I should do in certain situations that I wasn’t prepared for. ‘Sink or Swim’ comes to mind.
- The company provide ‘Wellness Wednesday’ sessions in which they get guest speakers in to talk about serious issues that may impact colleagues. While this should be a pro, it’s unfortunately going to have to remain as a con because these sessions are not accessible to the vast majority of employees who aren’t allocated enough time to do their role as it is let alone taking an hour off on a Wednesday.
- The pay gap between outsourced and in-house staff is ever widening, however Firstsource regularly send out communications about record profits yet pay entry level employees (the vast majority of employees due to my first point) a bare minimum above minimum wage.
- On the topic of client based work, you’ll always find with Firstsource that ‘client request’ is always put behind any decision that’s made that can cause discontent. Are all these decisions client led? Who knows, but in one sentence it’s a difficult conversation about the client requesting a change and in another it’s Firstsource claiming autonomy with working practices so to be honest I don’t even think senior management are too sure where the lines are drawn.
