Friendly on paper, but collapsing from the inside
Pros
(some) members of the team were incredibly welcoming and generous with their time as I was onboarding and learning the role. Pay is good for the industry, decent benefits package. Offices were nice with regular free lunches and snacks/drinks. Flexible working is mostly accepted and encouraged, though depends on your team and manager. Welcome package (lunch with manager and buddy) is nice, but pointless if you don't have actual support during your first few months. Good to have on your CV to help you find work with other publishers.
Cons
-Staff are burnt out with little to no support from management. -Chronic understaffing leads to overworking, with portfolios double the size of other publishers. -Major changes to process and sudden overlapping deadlines mean staff have little time to complete daily duties or adjust to changes. -Incredibly process laden way of working that leads to duplication of work and additional time spent on time sucking tasks that would be better spent on other tasks. -Processes are somewhat outdated and behind other academic publishers. -Promotions and progression processes are shambolic. Managers only encourage ladder progression rather than lateral and diagonal progression, causing talented people to stagnate in mid and senior-mid level roles while they wait for the people above them to be promoted or leave. -Training and onboarding plans for new starters is non-existent. -General lack of diversity the more senior you become within the company. White members of staff with less experience often hired or promoted above existing internal staff who have to use the "BAME internship" to get a foot into the company, causing them to be chronically underpaid. -No negotiation for pay increases between staff and management (this sounds like it will level the playing field but it doesn't as new hires are encouraged to negotiate). -Employee forum claims to take feedback to management but as it is headed by internal HR rather than external trained Union Reps it is just for show and makes little active change. -Company and managers regularly ask for feedback but then dispute the feedback and refuse to act on it. -Managers regularly play favourites, with some showing bullying behaviour in the workplace. -Poor communication across the board. -Regularly hire staff on fixed term contracts but don't renew these contracts as they opt to hire externally for replacements rather than promoting or hiring from within. Leads to capable people who already know the job being forced to job hunt, while remaining staff have to pick up the extra work and also spend time training new hires. -Very navel-gazing approach to publishing. Senior managers have been with the company so long they have lost sight of how the publishing landscape has changed, and how the EA staff workload has changed since their day, leading to very little sympathy or compassion for bottom ranked staff.
