Pros
- Everyone knows each other in the office, very sociable - Free fruit - In-house canteen - Other members of IT team (not including manager) were very helpful and took the time to help me learn new things - Travel opportunities to visit other offices to conduct IT support
Kontras
- 40 hours a week contract for average market salary rate, many other companies in area offer the same or even higher salary for less working hours a week - Toxic work environment, was constantly pushed to always “look busy” even I was working normally, especially in front of clients or senior staff. Was told off a few times for looking like I was just “sitting around” when I may have been waiting for something to load on the computer system. - Incident resulting in unfair dismissal which originated from me granting myself additional permissions on the IT systems, I informed my manager of me doing this at the time when I added these additional permissions and there was no issue (he even said how cool it was I did it). As the months went on, this particular manager became more and more rude to me, telling me off for minor things and treating me very differently compared to the rest of the team (bias). If I did something wrong, I would have been told off and lectured on the mistake whereas if another member of the team did the same mistake, the manager would simply ignore it or just say something along the lines of "don't worry, just fix the problem". During a period of annual leave, my IT user account had been disabled and I was told I would find out why when I returned to work. After returning to work, I was being investigated for “having unauthorised permission access on the IT system”, when I explained that my manager was aware of this and I told him six months ago, the manager had “magically” forgotten me making him aware of this. I was suspended there and then and dismissed pretty much instantly afterwards. It was obvious the manager had wanted me dismissed as he went straight to HR when he “discovered” my additional access permissions on the system instead of contacting me and dealing with it informally. - The person who oversaw my disciplinary process did not know anything about IT on a technical level which I feel further put me at a disadvantage in defending my position in the disciplinary meeting. The same person who oversaw my disciplinary and dismissal was also promoted into a senior position that month, something I feel was wrong here as bias could have played a factor as they may have dismissed me by default as they did not want their promotion into a senior role potentially being impacted by not dismissing someone who the company may have wanted booted out. - When suspended, I was advised that I was not permitted to contact other members of my team while I was suspended. This apparently also applied when we were outside work and using our own personal phones to contact each other. I ignored this silly request and kept in contact with my colleagues anyway, when HR found out they were annoyed, I asked them what legal basis or grounds they had to physically prevent me from doing this and they just dropped the matter. - I raised a grievance against my manager at the time due to his actions on this, however I was still dismissed regardless and the rest of the IT team who still worked there after I had left told me the manager was still employed and that no formal action had been taken against him (meaning my grievance had been ignored). - Final insult to injury is the manager in question had actually resigned from the company for a new job a few months after I was dismissed, so even though the manager knew he was going to be moving on and not be working with me anymore, they decided to just get me dismissed there and then even though they knew they’d be leaving the company anyway in advance. - Reference policy for the company is quite awkward; this company seems to love giving out the reason for leaving on references to other companies. This means that the dismissal reason will be given out when contacted for a reference, so you are either forced to remove Firstsource from your CV or try and chance another company taking your side on the matter when it comes to explaining the reason for leaving. - HR obviously by default side with managers when it comes to disciplinary meetings, so if you are asked to attend one, then take someone else with you and prepare for the potential to be dismissed. I hear similar stories of this both from the contact centre and support areas of the business. - Office (Discovery House) was quite dirty and rarely clean