Great people but priorities in the wrong place at times - Medical Writer Langland Employee Review

Sit down folks, its time for a rant. Its always easier to talk about the negatives once you've left I think. These are all my honest thoughts and I hope you listen rather than dismiss - It is part of the enormous Publicis Groupe, which gives the impression that health is just a gimmick sector to them. Publicis group doesnt care about health but they are involved in health just to have a presence. It also means LL cannot make many of its own high-level and vitally important decisions, although it does have day-to-day autonomy. - The pay is seriously under-competitive, yet they claim to be paying industry standard. The highlight of this little issue was one of the yearly kick-off meetings they have (which in themselves are cool). HR decided to show us the results of a survey which showed that more than 50% of employees were thinking of leaving the business that year, and 50% of those said is was due to pay. Then they spouted a tired line about how they benchmark pay and swept the issue under the carpet. For those 1 in 4 of us who cared, that did not go down well AT ALL. You cant have a quarter of the workforce tell you the pay is bad and then just shrug your shoulders and say "well we pay the average". Maybe you should have more ambition than to simply pay the average wage for a role? In the time since then, everyone who I know has left has increased their salary by at least 15% elsewhere, and many were subsequently asked to stay and suddenly offered a pay rise. Come on...you let so many good people leave because you wouldnt increase their pay when they asked, to then suddenly find the cash from nowhere when you are in trouble? - LL, like other medcomms agencies, have a problem with work-life balance. They talk a good game and do often make some effort to help people, but these initiatives are exactly what you would expect (no meetings on a certain day, the option to take meetings on mobile so you can walk around, flexible working hours [which in itself is actually a ploy to make you work more I think]), but they refuse to do the one thing that might actually make a difference - stop taking on so much new work. In the year before I left, I was constantly amazed by the drive to secure MORE work instead of cutting down and giving the staff a well deserved rest. I get that a business needs to future proof its books, but it was tone deaf to excitedly reveal to staff on a Monday morning that even though many had worked part of the weekend to catch up, that even more work was potentially coming our way. The highlight of this issue was at the beginning of 2021, when morale was on the floor. Instead of doing something meaningful that would actually help people, you sent us all a book on "How to fall in love with your job again". The message we got was "its not our fault you are miserable, its yours. Here's a book telling YOU how to fix it YOURSELF" - amazing. - "Thats the nature of agency life" - stop saying this. Its so dismissive as to be offensive. People are telling you exactly what the problems are and you cant be bothered to try to be different and do things that actually matter to people - For that matter, another tone-deaf moment was the hiring of two diversity officers in the middle of last year, right as the wider group was furloughing people left right and centre, and freezing pay and promotions. You guys are probably sitting there thinking you've shown how in touch you are, basking in the warm glow of virtue, but the opposite was true on that one, everyone who isnt a total suck up just thought it was reactionary and fake, its just that everyone is too scared to say anything because you know, racism or something. - On that point, you should probably tone down the diversity stuff a little. You had a great MO regarding diversity of THOUGHT before the events of last year made you change your minds. The only people you are attracting now are the types who care about race, gender, sexuality etc. Do you know what most of us call people who have an unhealthy obsession with skin colour? Its on the tip of my tongue...begins with R I think. Some people just want to get on with their jobs please