What is the company culture like at GWI?

Forward thinking, great culture, flexible working and opportunities to get involved in lots of different projects. The company really value everyone as a person and care about the wellbeing of their employees.

Very fast-paced which can be good but things are constantly changing and are never settled. Turnover of staff is quite high which is a shame.

Half day Fridays for the summer

Look at the majority of the reviews the past year - they are all consistent and really shine a light on how far GWI has fallen, the decline is rapid. There is no respect for the employees here, despite the company constantly pushing their 3 culture values and the irony one of them is 'Show respect'. Redundancies are handled with the same amount as tact as a bull in a china shop, In particular the CTO showing unparalleled levels of lacking any empathy or understanding of people's roles. People are being made redundant and it has been framed around a tough market and needing to invest in AI; yet you have the CRO in a company wide Slack channel posting about a 2 day off-site for a large team all paid for, guest speakers paid for and then saying how much money there is in AI. How can they not see the optics of this? The constant narrative around being 'Agentic' is thrown around so much but with 0 evidence they actually know or understand what this actually means. People in key exec positions have actual no knowledge in their respective domains and this is killing the company. I genuinely believe I have seen toddlers display the ability to listen and take on feedback better. The wildest part not one comms has come out to address the culture and moral being at an all time low, I mean look at the score on here. The people team would acknowledge feedback on here, however the last few months they have given up i think. It is such a shame as there are people who really capable of doing a good job if they were listened to.

Good culture overall, talented people, good work-life balance

Salaries sometimes are below the benchmark of the market

The people here on the ground are mostly great. They are currently very low morale and unhappy, but they are genuinely nice people.

I was a huge advocate for GWI once, but my ability to do so has taken a battering over the last few years. I don’t know a single person here who is happy. - Extremely low morale. This is largely driven by a lack of psychological safety and job security. The ELT have put us through endless rounds of redundancies in just the past two years. This would be a problem in itself, but there has been literally no support put in place. There is a clearly a “shut up and get on with it” attitude displayed from the top, and this creates a culture of resistance from the rest of us. - Lack of skills / resourcing. GWI has lost many very pivotal people recently, either to badly managed redundancies or because those people left (and i don’t blame them). This puts a huge amount of strain on the rest of us. - HR “People” Team operate as a secret police that remove dissenters. Anyone seen to be criticising the company is swiftly canned. There are some real horror stories out there. - ELT team is extremely mismanaged. They are very reactive and make impulsive decisions without consultation or seemingly any planning. It’s so bad that I often wonder if it’s just AI psychosis from spending too long bouncing ideas off their favourite chat bot instead of talking to the teams on the ground actually working. - Wellbeing. A few years ago, I would have told you that this was the best thing about GWI. Since then it’s gone downhill rapidly. They’ve quietly stripped away all of their DE&I work, reduced the ability to develop and train, reneging on their commitments to hybrid working for certain teams, and to top it off - seem fixed on flattening management structures and replacing them with AI so we can “work more independently” (aka more cheaply, until they get rid of us in the next round of redundancies). The “People” team are nowhere to be seen on this. - Pay, Pay rises have gotten lower year on year, while expenditure on lavish revenue summits and yachts in Cannes have increased. It’s like a joke that as the experience of working at GWI gets worse, the pay also gets lower. - Communication. This could probably sum up 80% of what i’m trying to cover, but the ELT are hiding their heads in the sand right now and posting fake reviews to Glassdoor in order to stem the tide of dissatisfaction. - Values. GWI has three values - all three of which have been made impossible for the company to embody by the actions of the ELT. No one here can “Think Big” because they’re either too busy with their BAU because of redundancies and understaffing, or because they’re so checked out by all the disappointment. No one can “Ask Why” the threat of being made redundant or put on a PIP because of perceived dissent is extremely high. No one can “Show Respect” because the respect is totally gone. GWI does not see its employees as employees anymore. They are simply tools to create the next round of AI automations which can drive profits. It doesn’t matter what they think, because they can be replaced. That’s the implicit threat hanging over everything here. It’s unbearable.

A great culture, with a really flexible approach to work/life balance. A fast moving company, but I'm enjoying the breadth of activity that comes with this and the potential for the company to grow is massive.

It's fast paced, and there's lots of changing priorities.

Great snack selection in the office. The end.

I worked at this company for several years and unfortunately watched it decline significantly under new leadership. When I joined, it was one of the best places I’d worked. Strong results, high morale, and a genuine sense of collaboration. Over the past couple of years however, and under new leadership, there have been repeated redundancies (roughly every six months), which have created a culture of instability and incredibly low morale. There is little transparency around decision-making, and job security feels non-existent. Career progression is limited unless you are closely aligned with senior leadership and communication during restructuring has been handled poorly. Many long-standing, high-performing employees have been let go, which has had a noticeable impact on team morale. It’s also especially disappointing for those who invested time and effort building the company, to then watch senior leadership publicly celebrate promotions shortly after large rounds of redundancies. I’m genuinely saddened to see what this company has become. I would advise potential employees to carefully consider the current culture and leadership environment before joining.

Really friendly and supportive culture, lots of good perks and a clear and exciting company strategy

Certain processes could be made easier being outside timezone

Good company and good culture.

Wouldnt say it was the nost supportive atmosphere

It’s a great working environment, lovely office and perks - great flexibility too, and no micro managing - we get to have our say and time with the ELT as well Great hustle culture, and very entrepreneurial

They keep salary bands on job ads hidden to hide the fact that they’ll end up paying more for new employees coming in - don’t like the lack of transparency - people talk and leave when they find out anyway

Account management business is alright.

GWI sounds like it has a lot of promise, on paper. Venture funded, founder with a vision, great values and culture and a product that the market needs. Peek under the hood and reality is very different. The founder remains absent, as the company has gone down to 500 employees from 800 in less than a year with monthly layoffs across every region. None of the functions work well with each other and sales team is blamed. Unnecessary investment in tools as panacea for poor revenue numbers, which are then forced on the sales team again. The entire senior management lacks diversity and doesnt have a single representation from people of color, in 2024. None of the CXOs know what it takes to steer a ship through a tricky low interest rate environment and consistently bow down to VC pressure to make knee jerk reactions and puzzling changes. CPO often talked about changing Wework but probably forgets that Wework is going bankrupt and most of the C-suite layer comes across as tone deaf. Culture is talked about but rarely implemented, stemming from above mentioned lack of diversity. Everything is seen from a single lens and no explanation is given for layoffs. New business sales is probably the worst team to be in across the organization. Compensation is extremely punishing where if you do not meet 90% of an unrealistic quarterly quota you wont be paid much of anything (around 25% payout is standard). This is on top of some of the worst base sales compensation in the entire tech industry. The product itself is meant for agencies and GWI is trying really hard to sell it into enterprises. However, this is extremely tough as the syndicated database has way more breadth than depth, is already being used by most enterprises through their agencies. Company structure keeps changing so you never really know what you are in charge of. Further, most of the internal teams (research delivery, field and product marketing, partnerships) are misaligned and the entire responsibility falls on the shoulders of the sales team. Who are continually fired without reason or in the name of ‘culture’.