Now, this might get wordy. I'm going to try and be as thorough as possible. For me, a company like Sage should focus on their people and their products - if you get this right then everything else take care of itself through people's objectives. The reality is Sage focuses on a "number" and PR and that's it.
- Firstly, ultimately, Stephen Kelly has to go. I put 99% of the problems that I'm going to go through down to that man. He is a "rockstar" CEO if I want to use his jargon. Absolutely fantastic at PR and probably a good outward face of the company. But that's where his positives end. He's running the company into the ground and is purely focusing on a bottom line. His exec team focus the same way and I put that down to his direction.
- Sales targets - but a lack of direction. Again, the direction word will become a theme here. Sales targets rising and rising and rising. Head count going down and down and down. And now, a panic cull of ground floor employees because of a lack of leadership from above has not supported their managers correctly.
New Business - The reality is - Sage has no genuine new business strategy AT ALL. They've harped on and on about a TV advert - they're a FTSE 100 company and our non-FTSE competitors have been doing this for years. That is as deep a new business strategy as you'll find from that marketing team and the sales teams around.
- Communication - is non existent. I mean completely. Mr Kelly vowed to "smash the silos". And maybe he did and they always existed - but he's built silos around everyone else. Everything down to the recent shift to move our HR support team into a back office function. Marketing don't speak to sales, people change roles all the time (generally through undeserved backside kissed promotions or unannounced sackings - it's always extremes). Finance and Sales don't match up - they work off different reporting and no one can get their heads around how that works - analysts would absolutely poop their pants if they could see the on the floor reality of this.
- Forced ranking. Ask a manager for a ranking, change it without even asking and submit it. It's horrendous. It makes me wonder why even have managers full stop? Just let ground floor staff work and then just sack as appropriate (hey, this could happen given the recent changes!)
- The number. Just find a way. No direction, no budget, commissions destroyed in sales, incentives nearly non existent now. Just find a way. The lack of direction or thoughts on doing this from mid-senior management levels is disturbing. These people are not managers on merit, they're managers because they've done enough backside kissing to be managers. The company will make the stats fit whatever agenda they want it to fit.
- Blame culture. Rather than working together, rather than collaborating to find solutions or actually facing into reality if there's a problem. Just fail and point the finger at someone. This, again, falls to Mr Kelly. It's from his level down, Senior Management cannot be told when their ridiculous targets are ridiculous for a reason - they are unrealistic.
- Boys club. (this isn't gender specific mind). Back to silos and communication here and head in sand. At a mid level, numbers might be unrealistic but they are NEVER CHALLENGED. So, the boys clubs kicks in. Whoevers friend group is the tightest knit will probably end with the most favourable targets.
- Completely misaligned salaries and bonus plans. From a sales point of view, you could be doing the exact same job as the person next to you and being compensated half/double that person. Now, on the flip side of this, I do believe you sign up to a contract and that's that - but this goes to extremes.
- PR PR PR. The blind panic around Social Media (and I include Glassdoor in that) is unbelievable. Look at the replies to the negative reviews on here. What I'm saying about head burying should ring true there (esp to existing employees). There's a lot of speak/waffle and little to no action taken. It's all about making certain that what is visible in the public domain is dealt with in a timely manner. A good example of this is you could have someone going through a technical problem on the phone, costing their business thousands, but going through the right process. If this person tweets Stephen Kelly, Christ, you might as well sound an air raid siren. It'll be dealt with and the business will sell their soul to make you not tweet negatively about them again.
- Whistleblowing policy not fit for purpose. I've seen people on here replying say to use it. Don't. There's no such thing as complete anonymity in that business. Someone will know it's you and there'll be a red mark and you could find yourself in the same boat as some of the last raft of employees that just went on the scrap heap. My advice would be if you've a problem, it will only ever be solved short term anyway, just take it as the push you need to get out of the door. Sage aren't the top payers in the industry anymore (unless you're a lucky one on a major contract). These jobs are ten'a'penny. The grass is greener on the other side in this case.
There probably is more but this should suffice.
