Pros
Having adhd and being a part of minority groups I feel like octopus’ company ethos and structure has been supportive of that without me even having to disclose and I expect more accommodations and support would be offered if I did. While there is a clear management structure, individual accountability and responsibility is encouraged, especially in my team. I have sometimes thought to escalate something to my management but instead been given the support and encouragement to handle it myself. I am able to manage my work collaboratively with my team and there is no micromanagement, my team leader is there to listen to concerns and support where needed but my teams workload is entirely managed between my team (all at the same hierarchy level) and I also have full autonomy to work from home (e.g. when not we’ll enough to work in the office or when I have an appointment or other requirement to be at home) or make relevant decisions (reasonably) about my work without needing pre approval. My team leader listens to concerns and suggestions and supports me in raising them to appropriate places in the company. There are clear places to raise requests for things needed in office like a desk assessment (e.g. if you had a disability, injury or something else effecting your ability to work at your work station) or even stuff as small as the teas you’d like stocked on your floor however some of the more intricate, person-centred or niche requirements (e.g. things that would impact specific minorities such as disability or being trans) can be harder to find pathways for raising. The office provides free food (for most dietary requirements) to staff working in the office as well as teas coffees and a mix of alcoholic and soft drinks every Friday (after work). Octopus regularly invests in staff social events paying back into the local area (e.g. funding a meal/drinks at a local restaurant) although certain teams do have more access and support in this than others. The new-starter training process at octopus is very good, with new starter training lasting over a week with training covering the company, internal structures, different teams and then there is meant to be specialised role focussed training after you have been assigned to your team (which doesn’t happen until near the end of training and is decided based on company need as well as your individual skill set - something that definitely benefited me joining octopus). The new starter training was very comprehensive and well organised however I joined a very busy thinly-stretched team and role specific training was essentially non-existent and was a case of learning on the job which I was lucky enough to do well with but other new starters in my team have clearly struggled with. Because of the structure of octopus; where they encourage collaboration and awareness between teams and the fact there is both an in-role pay and development matrix as well as a lot of different job roles and promotion opportunities (both management and non-management) I feel confident that there is significant room for progression in octopus and feel it is a good ‘career’ for people at most points in their work journey. Within a couple of months of starting my manager was already supporting me to gather the materials I needed to apply for my first step on the development matrix (and resultant pay rise) as soon as I finished my 6 month probation. I have also seen several opportunities come up for job roles 1-2 steps above my entry-level one which are often awarded to internal applicants (although they are always open to external applicants too) and due to the ever growing and changing nature of the company I feel confident that I will not be waiting around for multiple years for a chance of my own when I am ready to take a step up.
Cons
One key thing to highlight is that the company ethos and work-live/company engagement balance is quite different between Octopus Energy and Octopus Energy Services (the company that handles Octopus’ metering). Octopus energy clearly has a lot more funding and as such there is a significantly higher number of socials, bonuses, incentives and initiatives. There is also a better staff to workload ration in Octopus Energy and better working hours - teams that sit under Octopus Energy are generally less over-worked, have more free time and do not typically have to work evenings or weekends while in Octopus Energy Services the opposite is true. Having worked for both, the difference is quite visible and I wish Octopus would invest in and value both sets of staff equally. There is no HR team to my knowledge so it can be difficult to find out where to raise issues relating to that, it can sometimes be quite a bit of back and forth between different teams and departments; particularly if you do not want to involve your direct management. The higher leadership at octopus tend to make big decisions affecting multiple departments and processes without directly consulting and understanding the implications resulting in teams and their direct team leaders having to adjust to changes with little or no pre warning or advice in the resultant changes to processes, workload or reporting line. I understand that this is par for the course for a company that prides itself on change and innovation and of course it does have benefits like giving individual staff the opportunity to influence processes or apply for new positions but I do thing higher leadership could take a more measured approach to large-scale changes and consult affected teams prior to ‘go-live’ of these changes.