Pros
- Training budget up to max 1200€ per year per employee - Language course free of charges up to 25€ per hour - 1 Familiarization Trip per year (5 days) - 22 days of annual leave - Holiday scheme up to 6 nights free of charges on Bed & Breakfast basis - Social Committee events such as Christmas Party - Bonus - A multicultural company with international employees (up to 13 different nationalities), really the strength of that organisation (but 80% of employees laid off)
Cons
- No company strategy, no vision, no value, no identity, nor clearly identified position on the market - The business is built upside down: sales are made before knowing the availability of the product, which put pressure on the reservation teams to find the availability. - Inability to build a product: no market analysis, new products launched targeting the wrong market, no benchmark, no competitor analysis. All of that explains the failure of all the other brands launched (IrelandWays, TrekkingBug, CanariasWays) - Lack of knowledge and expertise of the tourism industry, lack of professional maturity - The company was created originally by stealing an idea from a competitor (just google the CEO to find the article regarding his trial in 2012) and it only got successful thanks to the technology tool for sales and a great marketing team who built amazing content and had extremely good PR - Emergency phone duty is illegal: employee is required to work during office hours and then to deal with the emergency phone out of office hours, which means being ready to work 24h in a row for 7 days, which is illegal regarding EU law about working hours as an employee must be given at least 11 consecutive hours of daily rest CEO: - No interpersonal skills: no respect, no manners, no reliability, not courteous, no diplomacy, he acts with no shame - Unable to listen and use feedbacks - Unable to focus: lack attention, dispersed goals, very disorganized which makes it extremely complicated to work with such a person, for employees and partners - No self-awareness of his image and of the image he gave of the company toward providers and customers (check TripAdvisor and Google reviews ... he even created some fake comments, writing a Google review under his own name), no credibility - No communication skills: incredibly catastrophic communicator, who damages relationships with providers and customers. Not customer-centric. - Micromanagement: trust issues with his employees, always on their back, asking multiple things at the same time that needs to be done for yesterday. Generates a feeling of harassment, a lot of pressure, stress, anxiety, etc. Basically most of the time you just want to tell him to let you do your job, but he thinks he can do everything by himself. - This lack of trust leads to a very dysfunctional team with a lot of gossips, political, backbiting, etc. - Doesn't lead by example but leads by fear - No ethic: his personal expenses are paid with the company's money Management of covid crisis: - No empathy at all - CEO threatened employees who were just put on lay off - CEO never intended to rehire them and get back to 50 employees, he even used this crisis as an excuse to get rid of employees who were there for 6 years and who started the company with him, without saying a word to them - Against government rules and advice, the CEO asked employees to get back to the office, while it was not necessary and it has been demonstrated that working from home was possible. In addition, he showed no care for their safety, by travelling abroad and not respecting the 14 days of self-isolation going to the office directly, combined with his inability to respect the social distance and touching his employees' stuff, making them feel extremely uncomfortable. - He believes there's no need for people as everything can be done by technology, which is not possible with such a niche and tailor-made product (even the cleaning lady has been replaced by an automatic vacuum cleaner). - On one hand, he told employees he can't keep them within the company due to pandemic and lack of income and on the other hand, he kept using the company's money for his personal expenses and trips abroad. - By getting rid of so many employees he destroyed the company's structure - He believes he can make the company great again, using Donald Trump's image in the town hall presentation. That's says everything. To summarise, it doesn't worth it for you to suffer from all of this. Whatever great your skills are, they won't be valued and you deserve to work for a better company and in a better environment.