Rothmans, Benson & Hedges reviews

Very high performance culture - up, up and out. Very high paced and demanding, great work-life balance program on paper, but it doesn't translate to reality. Not as much recognition and development for consistent high performers unless you are internationally mobile and willing to dedicate 12 hours a day.

Felt like working for a union. All of the sales reps have been doing the job for years, and have no plan to be promoted or advance their career. In fact, I witnessed many of my colleagues actually turn down promotions to head office, as they felt that the salary increase couldn't be justified by the prospect of actually having to do real work. I have never worked in a more unstimulating environment, and it was pretty depressing to look around at the utter lack of ambition in the office. Most of the reps are nice enough people, but they become so accustomed to doing such little work for such decent pay, that they develop a pretty sickening sense of entitlement the longer they work there for. I heard people saying things like "I can't believe they won't let us pick black for our new company car". The management team are even worse. Average age of managers is 50+, and average tenure is 20+ years. In most cases, they have worked for the company for their entire careers, and celebrate the fact that they have basically just cruised through their working years as a tobacco rep, only to then be promoted to district sales manager; the most benign job imaginable. The managers don't trust the reps to do their job (rightly so), and will follow up on calls you made the previous day, to try and catch you out on not actually completing the calls you had scheduled. That is basically all they do, try to micromanage reps, but they do a pretty marginal job of even that, since they are equally as unmotivated to do their jobs properly. Most of the sales managers are pretty incompetent, and have a conceited, closed minded attitude towards learning anything new. The most frightening part about them, is that they think that they have actually led an accomplished career, and feel that their status in middle management is worthy of some considerable praise. Reps who show any level of tangible initiative are instantly shunned by their colleagues, as the rest of them now run the risk of 'looking bad' for only working 3/4 hours per day. It's a pretty bleak existence for people who are even only slightly motivated to succeed. Extremely unprofessional work environment.