Reviews van Starred

Working at Starred comes with great challenges so if you are not ready to put in the work, it will be hard to find yourself at the company.

I am actually having to rewrite and readd this review because of the lack of willingness to receive feedback has resulted in some negative consequences for some people - as I mentioned, feedback is a gift here unless it is honest. So let's get into it! Wow, where do I start. Starred was a good(ish) company in early 2022, it still had issues with the top down culture and HUGE lack of diversity (both in general terms of DEI, but also in thinking), but there was a good culture internally, a clear direction and some achievable goals. Unfortunately, the only thing that has gone from strength to strength here is the total inability to make this company work, be a nice place to be and treat employees with any level of respect. Firstly, if you are a man here you will do very well. Even better if you are loud with no original ideas. There is one team member who had all 3 female members of staff he worked with raise complaints about him, with one leaving partly due to this, and instead of facing any sort of reprimand, he was actually promoted above other members of the company who deserved it much more. Issues were repeatedly raised with senior management, and each time told to either "deal with it ourselves", "talk to him directly" or "that is just how he is". It is no surprise though given that this sort of behavior runs throughout the company, with senior leaders making comments about female colleagues. During an event about diversity, it was raised with me that a manager made a comment asking someone at the event "why she wasn't wearing a pretty dress" to an event talking about equality, diversity and how we can promote that. Feels odd given I could say for certain that a man would not be asked this. If you are a woman, I would think twice about joining this company as you will be disrespected, not listened to and likely hired to tick a box. In fact, there were discussions of removing one diversity from the values ​​despite knowing it is a huge problem because "they can't just fire the board" and many other excuses of why they cannot possibly have anyone who isn't a white man in a leadership position. Generally, the company has struggled with direction and understanding where to go. Instead of investing time and energy into creating clear plans, utilising the internal skills to grow the company and listening to customer needs, they read something on LinkedIn, knee jerk reaction, talk about customers negatively and try the same thing over and over, expecting a different result each time. Unsurprisingly, there are some huge issues. They bring people in, with experience and ideas on how to change, but ignore all the suggestions and try to continue with how it has always been done. Starred then merged with another company, and unfortunately the merger has proved nothing but misalignment and chaos. The other company is known for poor treatment of employees, as well documented on Glassdoor, and this has very quickly become the way at Starred too. Lots of talks of really negative and nasty comments being made by senior people, people being treated poorly, people waiting for months to know about their fate. Generally, one of the worst internal vibes and treatments I have seen in 10 years of working. When I spoke honestly about how people feel and what people are saying, I was told by other members of staff that the person I spoke with was more angry about me raising it and trying to find out who told me certain things rather than actually being furious at the very real issues I had raised. Feedback is a gift here, unless it's honest. And then we come to recent layoffs. For a company that talks about being kind to candidates, they treat people appallingly when it comes to employees. With the layoffs, there was a lovely message of how they were helping those impacted and that everyone should stay positive (because you cannot possibly feel negative when your colleagues are being let go, you feel unsafe in your role and leadership have no idea what they are doing) - but very little of this came to fruition. Personally, I was advised wrong to do with my visa (now finding myself in an unnecessary, expensive and totally avoidable situation), removed from all meetings, not spoken to (asides from one short message offering help, which when I asked for something was ignored) and on top of this, was told 1 month before Christmas and a few days before my wedding. I had been asking for months about the situation, and previously told not to worry. Thankfully I trusted my gut and expected this situation. This company has an institutional lack of diversity, lack of care and unwilling nature to consider changing the ways in which they do things. The quote that comes to mind is 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ' which is exactly what happens here.