11 Sept 2019
Catalysis (UK) Response
6yI am so sorry you had such a bad experience here. It is very upsetting for all of us. As CEO I take personal responsibility for that.
We’ve looked carefully at your comments, and are exploring how we can improve things. Because, although we have a very low staff turnover (you can count on the fingers of one hand the people we’ve lost in the last year), elements of your experience may be common to others who remain.
Firstly I should clarify my role. I am more than 50% in the US, helping with the development of our presence there and driving new and existing business with massive global clients. We’ve nearly quadrupled our revenues over the last 4 years and it keeps me very busy. I should definitely report back to the whole team more transparently what I am up to and why. I can see that it is opaque to those not directly involved and that I may appear ‘absentee’. We have actually already been planning ways to address this with more regular, detailed communication to the team, which we kicked off at our recent awayday in Bologna.
It is also true that I work mostly with a relatively small number of people on the stuff I am doing, whether it is running the business or client work. Again, more transparency about what the senior team are up to would probably help with that. We presented an abbreviated 2020 business plan to the whole team at our awayday, and will be sharing the full thing January 2020.
The management of the company, people, promotions etc is handled by the wider senior management team, and I am not closely involved on a day-to-day basis. So if I don’t get to speak to someone for a while, that doesn’t in any way affect their prospects, progression etc.
But we clearly do need to make sure that the criteria for promotion are more clearly understood. Time at your desk is not a factor. We have a detailed skills matrix and set people clear objectives. Well over a third of the company has been promoted over the last year and a half, based on their achievement of those objectives. But we clearly need to do more to make the criteria understood to everyone and we will do so.
Your comments about a political culture do not reflect the experience of the management team, but that may be kind of the point. Again, very few people leave us, but that does not necessarily mean that this is not an issue. We are carrying out a full, anonymous, survey to try to get to the bottom of it.
I hope you have found a job or a course you enjoy more, and that you are thriving. Thanks for your feedback and candour about your experience here. And, again, sorry that it was not a good one.