Crunch

1.0

24 Jan 2019

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

- One thing you cannot fault is your colleagues. Many friendships and relationships are built at Crunch and you'll hear this from the majority of people there - Your first 6 months are great and teach you a lot of basic life skills. For accountants it's great to get your foot in the door but it becomes rapidly evident they'll only take you so far and you need to get out soon. For CMs, you get exposure to people from all walks of life and learn basic tax skills. Again though, you can only go so far and there's no career there for you. If you're in your early 20s then do it, but be prepared to move on within a year. - Some of the management really do care and try hard even in the face of insurmountable odds. The Accounting Manager, the Payroll Manager and one of the directors, really put their time and effort into doing what they can to improve it.

Cons

So, here we go. I was there for 3+ years and the idea in the beginning was great. Low cost accounting service with plenty of support should a client need it with the software. In reality, 'missold' is maybe too far, but new and prospective clients are often given a lot of inaccurate and misleading information which only serves to make everyone else's job more difficult. It quickly became apparent that rather than focus their energies on perfecting what is actually a great idea and model, they preferred to expand far too quickly and offer services the company could not reasonably handle. There is nothing wrong with ambition, but impatient ambition is to be their downfall. All the praise to sales and marketing. Every single company meeting was about their inflated achievements. Nothing for the accountants staying late, nothing for the CMs dealing with the brunt of the company failures day in, day out. This was particularly galling the first time. The tenth time? Plain insulting. Salaries are poor. I mean, poor. They've certainly got better in 3 years but are still miles behind other companies in the area. Let's not even get on to the painful process of trying to get a raise because it doesn't happen unless you threaten to leave at the right time. Opportunities are sparse. Progression is nigh on impossible unless you play the game. Managers on the client services side are all friends/ex partners, have been for years and aside from one of them, the remainder don't know or don't care what they're doing as they're safe, there's no danger of being moved on. The Accounting side is slightly different, but there are certainly people who were given roles simply to keep them there. Operations is simply the most incompetent 'department' I have ever worked with, they cannot run a basic text campaign without numerous errors every time and that is their base role. Amusingly you can even physically see the head of client services realised the mistake and the pain on their face each time it happens but there's no way they can get them out now. Talent and aptitude is unrecognised. People with previous experience in roles are not hired for similar internal positions if the game alluded to above is not satisfactorily played. If you're lucky enough to be one of the early ones in the company then your time is well spent as they practically give you what you ask for. If not, good luck! They cannot retain staff. They either push them away or force them out across all departments. Good developers and marketing staff have had no choice but to leave for various reasons. They also removed a number of management and senior staff in the summer for various reasons which certainly could have been resolved with less severe means, especially when compared to behaviours exhibited by other members of staff. With the 'investment' they received they appear to want to be whiter than white and in one fell swoop they lost that experience to save face and pride. All their promises of change are now so hollow that people have given up, hence why the staff turnover is so high. They have no interest in developing their employees and everyone, no matter how hard they work, eventually realise they're not appreciated and that carrot in front of them won't get any closer. Crunch sadly is now a conveyor belt of wasted talent and lost time.

Crunch Response

Hi there, Thank you for taking the time to review Crunch. You indicated that you worked for Crunch for more than three years, so hope you have some happy memories of working for us. We really appreciate your comments about the people at Crunch, who are wonderful and the team spirit here is well known and mentioned frequently by past and present team members. We care passionately about the constructive feedback that we receive and always aim to take it on board. We have over 10,000 clients and we’re investing in our technology and systems to further enhance our client experience. We do not feel that we have expanded too quickly, we are always considering ways to grow Crunch while maintaining the level of service to our existing clients who love our products and services. Our core clients are the heart of our business and always have been. We have invested a considerable amount of money in training and developing Accountants at all levels and enabling them to achieve world-class qualifications such as ACCA and ATT. We also offer qualifications and self development across Crunch, and our dedicated HR/L&D team manage requests and help to make them happen. We’re proud to recognise the achievements of all of our teams and do this on a regular basis. One of the wider team updates to the whole business was recently presented by members of the client services team and we are always putting names up in lights of our client facing roles dealing with busy periods, such as the Self Assessment deadline. We have screen updates shown around the office with ‘shout outs’ about achievements in all teams, and Client services and accountancy departments feature on every update we do. We pay overtime to Accountants for working additional hours and have had a number of social events over the last 12 months such as a summer party, an Autumn cocktail social event and of course our Christmas party, attended by over 140 of our team to celebrate success and thank everyone for their efforts. We also have Company Values awards which we have presented to more than 20 deserving winners in the past 18 months. We’ve worked hard in recent years to make our salaries competitive in the local market and recognise success with qualifications, promotions and additional responsibilities. We do an annual ‘cost of living’ pay increase, which has been 3% for two years running. We also complete thorough and comprehensive market reviews of all salaries at least quarterly, and we’ve made over 100 additional salary increases in the last 12 months for all levels of role across all nine departments. We’re delighted that 25 of our team members received promotions in 2018 across a number of departments, and we’re expecting this trend to continue as our team develops their skills and experience required for their roles. We have a fair and transparent selection process and create new roles where there is a business need for them, not solely to keep people who may have otherwise decided to leave. We’ve been pleased to receive applications for roles from a number of internal candidates. We love developing our talent, and those showing the drive to progress will get there the quickest. Some of our team have even moved to different departments to try new roles and learn new exciting skills. From an HR point of view, the issue mentioned in the Summer of 2018 was taken very seriously and dealt with in the way that any other company should deal with it. Fortunately, events in the media in the last 12 months have raised awareness of situations that can occur in the workplace and we are similarly committed to action. We stand by our actions and Crunch is an even better place to work as a result. Anyone who wishes to discuss an internal matter can speak to their manager or the HR/L&D team, and concerns can also be addressed in a formal way in accordance with our company policies which have ACAS guidelines firmly in mind. Crunch has operated as a stable business for around 10 years, and we’ll continue to go from strength to strength. Every mature business needs to evolve and make changes, learn from past experiences and address ongoing legacy issues which don’t have overnight fixes. We know what these issues are and will take action to address them with positive solutions. The lifeboats will not be needed to rescue an imploding Crunch any time soon and we’re confident of that. We’re happy to welcome anyone thinking about joining Crunch to visit the office anytime, meet the team and find out for themselves what it’s like to work here. We look forward to meeting you. Please note that we’ve raised concerns about the content of this review with Glassdoor via their community guidelines as it mentions job titles or teams where individuals could be easily identified in a smaller company like Crunch. We think this is very unfair on those team members when they do not have the opportunity to respond to these comments.

A fantastic idea unfortunately hellbent on self imposed implosion. - Anonymous employee Crunch Employee Review

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