A workplace filled to the brim with favouritism, racism, sexism, and outrageous unprofessionalism. - Business Development Cognism Employee Review

1.0
24 Jun 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you are career driven and believe in being part of an inclusive, fair, and diverse environment - Cognism is not the place for you. There are a few pros regardless - there are lots of company events offering booze and the chance to hook up with your colleagues to distract you from working for a toxic excuse of a company, if that takes your fancy.

Cons

I worked at Cognism for a year and the facade of being part of a thriving and inclusive workplace quickly disappeared. The general style of management is to praise high performers and ply them with compliments and alcohol but scarcely provide a route for advancing their career or any scope for growing their skills. The entire culture created by senior management has replicated a sales office in the 80s: - Senior management is a complete joke . They are far more preoccupied with being liked than actually doing their jobs and instead end up perpetuating discrimination across the team and playing favourites almost everyday. - Sexism is a HUGE problem in the company; women are continuously objectified and also denied career opportunities. The workplace often resembles a university rugby team preparing for a night out. Hook up culture and relationships between employees has created not only an incestuous environment, but one where you manage to snag preferential treatment if you're involved with senior management. - Casual and blatant racism is an endemic across the company - anyone who speaks out runs the risk of being ridiculed by management and damaging any chance of progression within the team. The company is clearly one which hires to only fill a diversity quota instead of actually creating an inclusive workplace environment. - You are left out of the Cognism circle if you don't partake in heavy drinking and/or sucking up to senior management. If you don't have the skills or suitability for senior positions and also adhere to management's style of not training people and treating them like sales machines instead of human beings - you'll probably be promoted. Refrain from having an opinion, meet your target by any means possible, don't object to any offensive remarks, and do whatever management tells you to do without a second thought, that's Cognism's motto. In short, if you are white, male, middle/upper class, love alcohol and drugs, and completely lack a moral backbone - Cognism is the place for you.

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Cognism Response
6y
Dear former employee, Cognism has a policy to hire graduates into junior sales roles and promote from within. Our current Head of Sales went through this route as did our now Head of UK Sales for Mailtastic. This policy has created accelerated career progression for employees that have performed in their roles. The company has consistently hit revenue targets and as CEO I prefer to give new opportunities to internal staff that have achieved results rather than hire externally. Cognism also have several female employees that are also now in senior sales roles after joining as graduates. Our former CRO was female who was our first sales hire and our current CMO is also female. Cognism celebrates success with our annual company wide offsite to Hvar that we ran in 2018 and 2019 and hope to run again in 2021. We now have strict rules around company events which we hope to host again after the covid crisis is over. Overall, the company will not tolerate any anti-social behavior and will investigate any instances where they are reported to HR or myself. Cognism is not going to ban employees being in relationships however we have strict rules around line managers and junior staff to ensure relationships do not affect careers. Cognism also runs a competitive process for promotions, we are always looking to improve that process and will review any criticism of it. We have never had any complaints sent to HR or myself about sexism or racism and as discussed in previous responses you are welcome to send any complaints and we will fully investigate as a former employee. I wish you the best in your future career. All the best, James CEO

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Pros

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Cons

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