Small company lost in fake corporate shenanigans - werkgeversreview Anonieme werknemer bij Calor Gas

An honest impression of my 2.5 years at Calor Gas: Nepotism - At least 5 instances of parent/child preference at the site which only had between 30-50 staff depending on time of year so roughly 25%. This is not including a further 3 instances I was aware of at head office. Nepotism was frowned on for staff but apparently not for managers. Favouritism - Certain colleagues were given favours or preferential treatment for no apparent reason which negatively affected the morale and work quality of many teams. Any query or challenge to this was shut down immediately, including by HR. My attempts to address this and receive a response took over 12 months with no serious formal response by line managers or HR. Bullying - The general atmosphere was tense, antagonistic and overly critical of tiny things when the big picture or day to day tasks were neglected in favour of witch hunts to ensure blame for any problems never went up, only down. Authority - I've never seen a company so obsessed with authority or hierarchy as Calor Gas. There are way to many managers and most are totally clueless. But they are a protected species at Calor Gas so it's heavily implied and even threatened in writing to never question or approach certain people as they are apparently exalted. Management at every level seemed determined to fulfil the following requirements: 1. Resistance to constructive feedback 2. Poor emotional regulation 3. Micromanagement 4. Unhealthy boundaries 5. Unreasonable expectations 6. Intimidation or threatening behaviour 7. Failure to develop team members 8. Unpredictable/inconsistent behaviour 9. Taking credit without recognising the team 10. Lack of empathy As I was a Manging Director for 5 years at a company covering a larger area than Calor Gas, in the time I spent dancing through hoops at Calor Gas, I would have been happy with only 5 of the existing staff members to be within shouting distance of my company. It's my belief that as the company is so small in number of employees, it's very easy for certain people to arrange favours and be in position to affect or block change when it does or doesn't suit them. I can only guess the purpose of this is to climb the ladder but given it's a tiny company, I don't understand the excessive lengths they go to. It's essentially corporate corruption at a tiny scale but still deadly. On that note, while I pride myself on being able to work under difficult, stressful and challenging circumstances, the final straw for me was when the Logistics Manager took a very casual approach to the death of a member of the public caused by a traffic accident with a Calor vehicle. Regardless of how that happened, using one sentence to express remorse in vague corporate language in the middle of an email about how we all needed to forget about it and focus on reaching targets instead is appalling to me. I remain ashamed to have stayed as long as I did.