customer service representative

administrator

disability assessor

monitor

field sales representative

Capita PLC

Disability Assessor

**A Typical Day at Work:**
A typical day at work as a Disability Assessor often felt overwhelming and disorganised the shifts at 9am - 5pm but always worked outside of these hours. The workload was inconsistent, leading to frequent last-minute adjustments and a lack of clarity in task priorities, i had to carry out 12 initial reviews and 2 paper based reports in a day, we constantly got audited which I did not mind as this was there to help me progress however the auditors come back with different thoughts as it is subjective. I had to work on the audits first then go back to my 12 and 2 which wasn’t achievable. Team managers constantly message about targets and why I was not meeting them so I was “rushing” my report to meet the targets which ends up coming back as a change in some descriptors. This made it challenging to maintain a structured and efficient workflow.

**What I Believe I Learned:**
While the nature of the job provided insights into the complexities of disabilities and the training was enjoyable however once you are on your own after the training you are looked at as able to do the job. The absence of structured guidance impacted my ability to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to excel in this role. As mentioned the auditors are different disability assessors and their views are all different there is no structure. 

**Management:**
Management was great at first, I was experiencing an increase in my seizures as worried about securing my job as you only have 6 months probation. My manager kept informing me not to worry about it as I am in the early stages. I was still falling short of my 5As in a row and my manager kept saying “you are still new to the company”. Did provide me with additional support but when I put the mentors advice into practice still remained to get different views from auditors. Then the end of October I was told they aren’t going to extend my probation so I was without a job which I was told last minute never throughout my regular meetings with my Team Manager of the looming D-Day until the Friday before the 30th October 23. When I addressed that this was not told throughout my probation meetings the manager became defensive and not a pleasant attitude “you knew it was only a 6months probation period”. I explained that there are others in my cohort who are going through the similar issues and have had an extension on their probation. Manager wanted me to give their names and expressed not willing to do so as it is confidentiality between colleagues. 

**Workplace Culture:**
Working from home was great and the teams of colleagues I worked with were all helpful as we were all going through the same issues and the consensus was the subjectivity of the auditors causing failings and constantly being messaged about targets. 

**The Hardest Part of the Job:**
The most challenging aspect of the job was grappling with a heavy workload with unachievable targets. Like I said the working hours are 9am-5pm but I was getting on the computer at 7:30am and finishing around 6:30pm / 7pm to “meet targets”. The demands of the role created a stressful environment that negatively impacted both job satisfaction and overall well-being. I used to be active but when I finished work I would grab a snack and sleep. Throughout the day I would each my lunch at my desk to “meet targets”. 

**The Most Enjoyable Part of the Job:**
Regrettably, there were few enjoyable aspects to highlight. The limited moments of satisfaction derived from helping individuals with disabilities were overshadowed by the overall dissatisfaction caused by organisational issues. The potential for job satisfaction was hindered by the systemic challenges within the workplace.

In summary, working as a Disability Assessor proved to be a frustrating experience due to disorganisation, structured auditing. They said they look after the wellbeing of the staff which I think is never truly honoured. Addressing these issues is crucial for creating an environment where employees can effectively contribute and find fulfillment in their roles.

I don’t usually write job reviews but felt that I had to with this job role as want to protect people from falling into the trap of “work life balance” which is none existent. I worked more hours than I used to in a trust setting and had time to fully rest. I was becoming more anxious of Monday coming round again. The feedback from audits weren’t a problem I loved getting feedback but like I said it is subjective which causing inconsistencies from 1 auditor to the next. I came from an A&E nurse background and I found working with Capita more stressful and less rewarding. 

I say AVOID, RUN and FLEE.
Training for the DA role is fantastic BUT it is not reflective of the actual job role.
Capita knows this job can have a detriment to your wellbeing and during training they encourage and inform new DA’s about a free counselling helpline for them and their families. What kind of Job will offer this pre-emptively unless they know the effect of this? They give the number to the DA’s during training which explains a lot.

Capita knows that most people are not cut out for this role. This is not because it is hard to master BUT they know it really does not offer what it promises. A sensible human being would not work under such conditions as truly there are better companies to work for with Real Work-Life balance right from the time you start the job. Believe me, I know as I have done my research on this. 

Overall you will have no-life in this job role. Work-life balance is a myth – it comes once you’ve endured many years later when you work for QLS(quality learning support- or in audit or as a coach). 

It will suit you if you like to be on your own and can dedicate yourself 100% into the role until you are approved which is usually in 6months time or longer with performance management.

Those who cherish having time for themselves such as going out with friends, explore hobbies, watch TV and not be working only and like to complete their work each day THEN this is not the job for you. This job will isolate you and pressure you so much it can affect your mental health functioning. I would say DO NOT BE TEMPTED with the MONEY. I have worked for agencies and have made TWICE that salary in a month and the best thing is when I got back home – I could relax far away from work. 
 
If you want a breakdown of what I mean that there is no work-life balance then continue reading below.

In the role, you put in more hours than are advertised. They say your work is 8am-8pm but you are employed 37.5hrs a week so if you think about it “How does this work out?” Well, 8am-8pm works out to be 12hours a day and a week this works out to be 60hours meaning in theory you are doing 22.5hrs extra unpaid.

Now let's go to the REALITY- the work system opens at 6 am daily and shuts at 8 pm and it is open on weekends. This effectively is 14hour days which are typically what most new DAs put into getting reports written in terms of hours. Most new DAs have to work over the weekend too so they are effectively doing 84hours to 88hours a week extra unpaid.
The report writing takes on average 2hours per report to write it while sitting on a laptop. Most DAs see 4 clients in the clinic for 4 hours then travel home to complete reports which can take 2hours each for one report. Realistically and ergonomically NO-ONE can sit on a laptop for 8hours continuously + 4hours of clinic time and then travel back home. If you total this it works out to be 4hrs+30minutes +8hrs = 12&1/2 hours a day. Actual data shows 4hours clinic time + 30 minutes travel back home and write 4 reports for at least 2hrs each and with 2 breaks in between of 15minutes and not to mention food or toilet break which when Totalled it is 4hrs(clinic time)+ 30min(travel time)+4hrs( to write 2 reports)+15min(break from computer)+4hrs(write 2 more reports)+15min(break from computer) + food 30minutes = 13hours.
The above is just report writing.

Then we have prepping which is required 2 days before attending to visit a client. This can be 15minutes to over 1hour depending on the evidence provided. This took me at least 1 and 1/2 hours to fully prepare for each day. At times I prepared at least a week in advance so I am not always playing catch up and would use my day off (weekends) to prep. 13hours + 1&1/2 hours = 14&1/2 hours worked hours a day (IN A WEEK IT IS 72.5 hours worked which adds an extra 35hours unpaid. 

Then each report goes through an audit review and is sent back with amendments which are often very tedious/critical and are graded U (unacceptable) to A grade and having been a Nurse for years it is very demoralising to get U grades. Without getting 5 A grades then you will not be approved and get the sack, this creates more tension.

Amendments are daily and usually, a DA has 3 days to send forth their reports and amendments need to be completed in 48hrs. This makes you have 4 reports and if you have 4 amendments back then it is 8 reports to deal with. 
All Unrealistic.
AVOID-RUN-FLEE.

I was briefly a DA - it is a job of extremes, with about 10% thriving on it and 90% being in the most miserable place mentally and emotionally they've ever been in their life. 

Training is a little hard but fun, with a cohort starting at the same time. You make some friends, and it is paid - a good salary. 5 weeks easily passed. 

There are essentially 3 variants of the job. 
1) Paper-based, where someone's dependence is obvious, from records and medical notes. Boring, but easy money if you're IT literate. 
2) Mainly clinic-based - you stay in clinic and people come to you. You listen to their tales and look for EVIDENCE of what they tell you. Their diagnosis is irrelevant in and of itself; independence, or specifically evidence of it, is what is assessed. This is not pleasant, basically because nearly everyone lies though their teeth to you and is clearly obvious, but you can bear it and write the report and be home before typical working hours would usually allow. HOWEVER very few areas allow you this - 90% are not this lucky.
3) Mainly (read, almost always) home visits. This is mental, physical, and emotional torture. The day is not 9-5pm. Read, 7:30am - 10pm to assess and submit reports. Some of reports will be returned to you by daily audit for 6 months (!), so next day you will have 7:30am-10pm PLUS amendments. Rinse and repeat. The actual assessment will be 5% people who ought never to have required an assessment, i.e. terminally ill or not compus mentis. >90% will be blatant, ill-informed liars who attempt to emotionally blackmail you - as a AHP, this is so, so obvious - not least when you meet these supposed 'invalids' playing tennis at a local club or out for a days' shopping... again, none of these clowns are informed enough to realise that clear EVIDENCE of DEPENDENCE is what is being assessed - diagnosis is completely and utterly irrelevent. Further, the audits will (apparently arbitrarily, though very occasionally logically) require you to change your report, and by default that will possibly change that person's award. You MUST do this, if audit demands it, to emphasise that a person was basically lying. IF someone gets a lower award than previously (which they will, it being PIP, not DLA, and therefore actually representative of how they are affected - i.e. not very) YOU are challenged, and complaints filed against, despite nearly always the decision reflecting the requirements of the audit, not your actual report. Despite attacks on these fronts, it remains that:
you have to tolerate an hour of a person's lying and aggression (in their home, usually rough and/or intimidating) 3-4 times a day, arrive home when hours ought to be finished, only to start approx 4-5 hours solid of typing, to have this rejected and returned, and ultimately a complaint filed against you when you finally get it submitted. This, considering what you are actually outputting is FACTUALLY CORRECT - the vast majority who are on PIP are neither entitled to it nor in need of it, and they are bitter when this is evidenced. 
Of all the take-aways from this, it is the revelation of the nature of the clients that made me most miserable - a corporate, cold, 'you-are-expendable' management I get, considering they pay well, and it is nothing new. However, the truth-tellers (DA assessors) are those who suffer unbearably whilst liars (almost the entirety of the supposed dependents) are trod carefully around and either re-assessed with minimal difference or ignored. 

TL:DR - management don't care a fig. Job is utter torture, unless you land on your feet with location. It is only those lucky few who hae a hope of progression. Clients are >90% verifiable, clinically and medically inconsistent, aggressive liars who will ensure you are complained against for telling the truth, so they get an extra £10 a week. This latter, and the >80 hour weeks means it's 100-1 you won't last 6 months. 

What I learned: Most PIP dependents are liars. Most managers don't care.

It sounded like a good idea at first. Only having to see the claimant once and writing up reports at home. Up to 38K pa. What could go wrong? Well... I should have known from the initial telephone interview that something wasn't right. The woman interviewing me was rude and blunt in manner. I felt like hanging up at one point but I didn't. Next big problem first day of training. I had received written confirmation that I had been offered a permanent full-time position. However the group were informed on day one of training that if they didn't pass the 5 week course they would have to leave the business. This created fear and uncertainty within the group from the start. At the completion of the course we found out they were serious in there threat and 5 people were dismissed by phone call from management. First week on the job managers inform those left that if they don't get 5 acceptable reports in a row they will be dismissed after completing 70 reports (this is about 2 months work). Oh I forgot to mention it takes an hour and a half at least to write up the reports so if you see four a day that is a 10 hour day excluding ant amendments you have to do for reports that were deemed unacceptable by the audit team and any preparation you have to do for the next day. So in total you're looking at a 12 hour day. The managers are non-clinical and have no idea about working as a health professional. When the job begins you have to submit all your report to something called QLS (quality learning support). They look at the report and decide if it's good enough to be submitted to the DWP. They often send them back to you requesting that amendments be made which is very discouraging and demoralizing after a short while. It's easy to fall behind with the reports. At this point you will really regret leaving your last job however bad it was. The process of writing the reports also becomes very tedious and repetative before long. The support structure for disability assessors is flimsy at best. The coach will meet and observe you but this does not feel supportive. It feels more as if they're sizing you up for dismissal. There is a support line you can ring but this does not ease the feeling of remoteness an isolation of being a lone mobile worker doing a very difficult job. The kindness and caring of nurses is not appreciated in this job it is all about firing questions at the claimant and getting as much information as possible in the 45 minutes you have allocated with them. The managers have access to everything you do at work that is on computer and they don't ask if they can access it (your work related emails for instance). When you see the claimants they have to prove to you how disabled they are. It's like checking up on people in a prying way. The physical examinations can be uncomfortable or even painful for them but they feel under pressure to comply because they don't want to lose their benefits. It feels like quite a demeaning process to put them through. At this point as was I was scrambling around nursing agencies trying to get something else before they fired me I began to feel very ashamed of this job I was doing. Also some of the disability assessors seem to find favour soon receiving bonuses and more work while others do not with no explanation why. The mind numbing, boring, repetitive nature of the report writing, much of which done at home in your own time is one of the biggest drawbacks of this job. Overall Capita are a ruthless company who treat nurses as being a dispensible resource that can be hired and fired when it suits them. They do not care. Shame on them!  They let me go the week before Christmas on the 18th of December 2017 to be precise. Not only did I not have a job they destroyed any confidence I once had in myself as a mental health nurse and was so depressed that I nearly had a nervous break down. Stay away from this company

The job is a basic repetitive job which involves receiving outbound calls. The training is very basic and when I worked there we were told to not give callers timescales. For example, if a Dentist called in asking about their application to join the Performer List and wanted a timescale then we were told to say we do not have timescales. This is very unprofessional and I have never worked for a company that asks their staff to just fob their customers off. We could not access any information on the system, the only thing we could see is what notes had been made if the person had called previously. In addition to this, some members of staff would make their own timescales and lie so the customer would call again because their problem was not resolved and someone else had to deal with the mess that was created. The Managers would not care about this if you reported it to them and they would simply say something along the lines of 'the customer must be lying because ____ would not say that' rather than checking the original call. Yet when they had to take escalation calls, they would always side with the customer and were quick to throw their staff under the bus and magically they would be able to provide a timescale and could also call the Back Office team (basically the Admin team in Leeds who dealt with the query) to chase their query! This made us in the call centre look like incompetent fools and when the customer would call with another query, they would ask for the Manager because they had helped and provided timescales. It was one rule for us and another rule for the Managers because they would do anything they could to get the callers off the phone. Although the role was a Customer Advisor role, it felt more like a Complaints management role. When customers wanted to call a complaints number, we had to advise them to send an email as there is no complaints number which led to calls having to be escalated to a Manager. The Managers would also avoid having to take these calls and there was clear favoritism in this workplace. If you like being a yes man or yes woman then you will get on with them well however do not expect to be promoted or turn this job in to a career. They are always looking for new staff members as staff leave so often because of multiple issues. In addition to this, the environment is very childish as members of staff generally have little to no education. They spend their days gossiping about each other, what everyone is wearing and making very inappropriate comments about the female members of staff which is disgusting. I have also heard male members of staff rating the women in the office out of 10, commenting on how they dressed and making very very inappropriate comments about their body. This is all done within earshot of the "Managers" so surely they can hear this going on but they do not get involved. They need to resolve this before someone complains and takes things further. In hindsight I wish I did take things further but it seems like it is too late now. There has been a complaint regarding racism at one of their other offices and Capita were found to be in the wrong so they really need to ensure their staff stop acting this way. The wages are not great based on how stressful the job can get with all of this going on. You will also be constantly grilled about the time you spend on hold, on mute, on break, on lunch and when visiting the restroom. This may seem normal and I have had this happen at other workplaces which is totally acceptable but they will just complain about this with you and not offer solutions on how you can improve this. This was not an issue for me whilst I was at Capita, however I felt as though some members of staff could have benefited from being provided some advise as they had not worked in a call centre role before. Overall, if this sounds like an ideal workplace for you then I would recommend them but honestly I would just apply elsewhere and not bother putting yourselves through this.

It sounded like a good idea at first. Only having to see the claimant once and writing up reports at home. Up to 38K pa. What could go wrong? Well... I should have known from the initial telephone interview that something wasn't right. The woman interviewing me was rude and blunt in manner. I felt like hanging up at one point but I didn't. Next big problem first day of training. I had received written confirmation that I had been offered a permanent full-time position. However the group were informed on day one of training that if they didn't pass the 5 week course they would have to leave the business. This created fear and uncertainty within the group from the start. At the completion of the course we found out they were serious in there threat and 5 people were dismissed by phone call from management. First week on the job managers inform those left that if they don't get 5 acceptable reports in a row they will be dismissed after completing 70 reports (this is about 2 months work). Oh I forgot to mention  it takes an hour and a half at least to write up the reports so if you see four a day that is a 10 hour day excluding ant amendments you have to do for reports that were deemed unacceptable by the audit team and any preparation you have to do for the next day. So in total you're looking at a 12 hour day. The managers are non-clinical and have no idea about working as a health professional. When the job begins you have to submit all your report to something called QLS (quality learning support). They look at the report and decide if it's good enough to be submitted to the DWP. They often send them back to you requesting that amendments be made which is very discouraging and demoralizing after a short while. It's easy to fall behind with the reports. At this point you will really regret leaving your last job however bad it was. The process of writing the reports also becomes very tedious and repetative before long. The support structure for disability assessors is flimsy at best. The coach will meet and observe you but this does not feel supportive. It feels more as if they're sizing you up for dismissal. There is a support line you can ring but this does not ease the feeling of remoteness an isolation of being a lone mobile worker doing a very difficult job. The kindness and caring of nurses is not appreciated in this job it is all about firing questions at the claimant and getting as much information as possible in the 45 minutes you have allocated with them. The managers have access to everything you do at work that is on computer and they don't ask if they can access it (your work related emails for instance). When you see the claimants they have to prove to you how disabled they are. It's like checking up on people in a prying way. The physical examinations can be uncomfortable or even painful for them but they feel under pressure to comply because they don't want to lose their benefits. It feels like quite a demeaning process to put them through. At this point as was I was scrambling around nursing agencies trying to get something else before they fired me I began to feel very ashamed of this job I was doing. Also some of the diabilbity assessors seem to find favour soon receiving bonuses and more work while others do not with no explanation why. The mind numbing, boring, repetitive nature of the report writing, much of which done at home in your own time is one of the biggest drawbacks of this job. Overall Capita are a ruthless company who treat nurses as being a dispensible resource that can be hired and fired when it suits them. They do not care. Shame on them!

I am a highly experienced Test Manager with over 20 years experience of working in the IT Industry, with particular focus on Software Testing.  

I have substantial experience of successfully delivering large & complex applications from their initial concept through to end to end testing & delivery to live. 

The key has been my ability to balance a quality tested product within the constraints of time & budget, delivering a product that is user rather than the developer driven with an ability to say NO!

There are three main components that have helped me in my testing career:-  Processes, People & Passion.  As team manager/leader I am responsible for the planning, managing & control of testing & implementing any contingencies.  My manta is to ensure that Quality & adherence to standards is the  No1 priority.

 I am also a highly effective planner & organizer. Recently I have worked on projects where “chaos” has been the norm.  By being  organized & planning I can at least operate “chaos” in a controlled manner!.

Test Processes provide the building blocks on which a project will either succeed or fail. A key part of my  job is to define the overall test approach to ensure the delivery is feasible under the guidance of viable test plans & approach. These are then used to guide the management of the test processes  through all the test phases,  from system, Integration, User Acceptance phase through to post Live. My plans always include scope, constraints & evaluation activities. Additionally I provide  test deliverables, of what should / should not be tested, metrics that should be captured, hardware & software requirements, environmental needs, the level of testing, training, tools & bug management. I also define the pass/fail criteria, including if / when testing should be suspended & resumed. A key document that I use to assist work is a risk log. I create and maintain this with every project. The log is prioritized by criticality & then rated by severity, complexity & likely impact. 

A key to my success this that I make myself the point of contact for the test team with all stakeholders, whether that be Product Owners, Analysts, Developers, Senior Management & customers. I make sure that test are not kept in isolation from the rest of the product delivery.

In the last 3-4  years I’ve adopted a more of a Risk & Exploratory based approach to my testing. While in the last 2 years I’ve combined this with the introduction of Agile Methodology (SCRUM) into Capita Children Services . This has made me rethink my whole approach to testing, which I feel has benefited both myself & the projects I’ve managed.  

I am a passionate believer in people & especially their training, development and mentoring. I am always looking to improve my skills & those of the testers of whom I manage. During my role as Test Manager I have managed up to 20 staff (both on & offshore). My role was divided between Project delivery & enhancing the skills & capabilities of my testers. I concentrated on developing the skills & mentoring them. During this period, 4 of them have gained promotion. I believe this success is attributable to my aim of constantly raising the bar higher & challenging myself & those around me. 

I am now the mentor for a group of IT Apprentices. Working with conjunction with QA Training, I have selected and  employed   four apprentices who receive on the job training while studying for the Microsoft Level 3 qualification. My role is to provide on the job training, pastoral care & support. This has proved to be extremely successful & I am in now in the 2nd year of this scheme.

PROS:
Free hot & cold water, tea and coffee, there's a fridge and a TV in the rec room, sofa's aren't bad in there.  Carpet's clean, desks are tidy.  Some of the TL are nice.  There's a shower on the top floor if you need it.  You'll get a 'Next' discount card.

CONS:
The monitored metrics are impossible to achieve and feel to be setup for you to fail.  Documented discussions and Gross Misconduct are handed out for the daftest of reasons like confetti, the usual outcome is extended probation. High waged staff park free, low waged staff pay through the nose.  Breaks are too short, and you'll never see the canteen unless you wolf your food and don't use the loo.  Health & Safety wasn't adhered to.  The training was rubbish. They don't put O/T on wageslips (you even have to ask for those), so you can't tell when or if they paid it.  Don't you DARE get ill.  You'll have to sort your own Tax out from home, or stay on emergency forever.  Security watchdog is overkill on steroids.  The phones are basically tachographs, headsets are held in with blu-tack.  Splitting up your days off sounds like a good idea, in practice it feels like you're never away from work.
_______

KEY POINTS:
You're constantly stressing about pleasing the quality dept instead of concentrating on just doing a good job.  If your job is "customer service" that's what you should be giving - good customer service, and nothing else.  The kpi's, and monitored metrics plus the constant interfering hinder that, and eventually mess with your head.  Call drivers don't help, they just add to the pressure and stress - woe betide you if you make errors though.

Team leaders get it, they know, they agree - but they know that can't affect anything.  It is what it is and this is the job, so shut up and get on with it kinda thing.  I mean, you can know 100% whats wrong, but you still have to go through a long series of pointless flowcharting leading to calls of 30 minutes or more - and you're supposed to be done in 7.

Andy Parker CEO doesn't do anywhere near enough to ensure best practice.  And the Health & Safety is practically none existent - send ill people home, or everyone gets sick (thanks air-con), and that surely has to impact the quality of the delivered service, ya know, when you have a banging headache, cant stop coughing, but they still want total concentration & 110% out of you. 

The training was frankly rubbish.  Our trainer did games all the time.

Service Information is all over the darn place, a disorganised mess - all I can say is thank god for access to google.

I worked with and met some lovely people, made some good and lasting friends... and that was the best part of it - the management Ops and HR are over-rated, over benefited, and overpaid.

TO SUM UP:
As a company, yeah, It's ok to get you off the ground, but that's about it.  Staffed mostly by tweens in college or uni.  Not a company to be taken seriously, and the wage is a joke at just above NMW.  They promise you £8.05, but good luck reaching that less you pass probation.  My advice, never be late, never get ill, hit all your metrics.  Good luck with that too :\

The churn rate is extremely high.
I'm happy to be out, and never again.

Capita has been going long enough to have gotten this right by now - but it hasn't, it just 'thinks' it has.

I agree with all of the negative reviews regarding this god awful company. 

The hours are disgusting. The flexibility means that they can change your hours, your shift, your days off with nothing more than a 3 week warning. This is reviewed every 3 weeks which makes booking holidays even more impossible than they currently are. The availability is non-existant for the remainder of 2016; we're in august. 

The unit itself is essentially a tin full of very ill people because people are too scared to be off ill. I genuinely overheard a conversation with a co-worker which stated that because she was not well due to a difficulty with her pregnancy, then she would be taken into a disciplinary and sacked. I was sure this was illegal but was told that they could do as they pleased.

Management are indeed micromanaging not only the staff in their team but also others who aren't even in their team and indeed each other. Got a customer asking to speak to a manager? Forget it. They are far too lazy to take the manager calls off of your hands. 

Working for Capita is made harder by the fact that the businesses who outsource to Capita set targets twice as high as for their own staff for half of the pay. The outsourcing to places like South Africa make your job twice as hard as not only are you dealing with customers who are angry when they call in but the offshore agents play around with accounts and transfer customers through to whatever department they feel like it leading to your own KPI's being affected. 

20 targets is indeed insane. They want your aftercall work to be down, but complaints to be perfect word for word. They want sales. They want complaints. They want account management. They want payment schemes. They want new customers. They want services. Its ridiculous. The poor customer just called to give a meter read and they are having all of these sales shoved down their throat. 

There are some 'experts' who are actually very decent people who dont stop all day. They are not on the phones but they deal with all the systems which do not work correctly and once again affect our KPI's.

They employ hundreds of people and do not provide parking for these employees (expecting them to park around the corner in the Next warehouse) and they do not have enough working space (typical team having 20 staff but the 'team pod' only having 8 seats)

Without a doubt this is the worst job I have ever done. The people are the only positive of this job, but the job is affecting wonderful peoples' mental state. There are adverts everywhere talking about depression in the workplace and vitamin d deficiency. There is a diabetic girl who works on a 'pod' near me and she has to inject insulin at her desk despite several pleas for KPI allowance to stay alive. Its purely disgusting.

This job is smashing as a stop-gap between other employment. If you are after making money quickly whilst you look for alternative employment, then this is the job for you. But dont get sucked into the job. Dont be fooled thinking this will be an enjoyable job.

The interview process was incredibly easy, as long as you have some customer facing experience you’re basically guaranteed a job. I forgot all of my research about the company at the time of the interview and was still hired. It took 2 weeks from the interview for me to start and from the beginning of training there were huge problems. 

The training materials are almost all irrelevant to the job role and the training systems don’t work properly, so when you get up onto the call floor you still don’t fully know what you’re doing. It also took weeks for us to get access to all the programmes that we needed to be able to help customers. We weren’t trained properly on how to navigate most of them, including the main one we had to use!

That wouldn’t have been an issue if the floor support team did their jobs properly. Training was meant to continue while we were on the phones and instead we were left to fend for ourselves because most of the support team were either too lazy to get up and help or they helped whoever they felt like assisting in the moment. A lot of them also advise different things which would get us in trouble with managers and just goes to show how bad the training is. 

There was a lot of favouritism between most of the managers and support which made the support issue even worse because they were too interested in their own conversations and sucking up to actually pay attention and do their jobs. There are a few times where I’ve witnessed floor support screaming in peoples faces for being 4/5 minutes late and not even letting them explain themselves (which they shouldn’t have to because they’re not managers).

Even though they knew we weren’t trained properly, managers still gave us the same targets as staff that had been there for 4+ years. People would complain constantly about the lack of training and support but the managers would just say they’re aware and change nothing. This job can really affect your mental health. It affected mine and quite a few of my colleagues which resulted in us leaving.

The plus side is that the money was decent and there were opportunities for progression so if you can pass probation (3 months starting from the first day on the phones) and try to pick up as much knowledge as you can, you can get moved to different areas of the company. The dress is casual and they also do drug testing at the start of probation but they’re not strict with any of those things. They have great benefits like 100s of discounts, life assurance and early wage access which of course is a big help in times like these.

Workplace culture aside, the job was exactly what you’d expect from a call centre but you will definitely come across a lot more understanding customers than rude ones. You do feel good about yourself when you get a customer that’s really worried about something and you’re able to resolve everything for them.

If the company had more considerate management, better support and a good training programme that made sense, I would’ve loved to stay on and progress but a lot needs to change.

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