I’d like to start the review with a warning to the fact that most of the positive reviews from people within the EV seller team are disingenuous and have been written due to the head of activation explicitly asking people to leave them to help with recruitment to water down all of the negative ones that are starting to appear. This is the general theme at OEV; don’t address or fix the actual problem which would require listening to how staff feel, just try and navigate around it using the fact that it’s a ‘start up’ as the reason and pointing to the fact that there is apparently a great culture. Around 80% of staff in the role are either looking to leave or are seriously considering it, this number rises further for staff that have been in the role for over 6 months, this is an open topic of conversation amongst the EV sales team as well as their own managers. Any OTE figure given is false and you can expect this to significantly decrease over time along with increasing stress from complaint customers and those who cancel orders. You will quickly realise that you are just a number to them despite the promises of progression that come with joining a ‘start up’ which is rapidly growing. There are a select few that have progressed but unless you were in a year or two ago then these opportunities just simply don’t exist. Any previous experience that you have or suggestions that you make may be listened to by your direct manager but as soon as they go above to the head of department (the same person that is ironically the head of culture) they will be ignored and instead they will simply turn back to the fact that we need to make more phone calls. You can see the attitude towards feedback from less senior members of staff from those more senior in the response to other reviews on here, for example the part on weekend work that was mentioned on a one star review. It is absolutely true that the team were asked to work on the weekend for food vouchers and potential extra commission but no guaranteed pay. Those who didn’t would then not have access to the leads on Monday as those who worked on the weekend would have taken them. Granted they had the choice but they felt that they had to do it because the targets at that time were impossible to hit and they didn’t want to miss out on getting paid any commission. It is worth noting that no senior managers worked on these weekends either and the head of sales often states how they aren’t paid commission - this point alone is fine and it is for them to negotiate their own renumeration, however, in a time when the main stress of the team they supposedly lead is earning little to no commission (which was sold as almost a certainty when taking the job) is completely out of touch and quite distasteful. In the interest of fairness, weekend work hasn’t happened recently, mainly due to how badly it went down initially. The main point to this paragraph is to highlight the attitude of senior members of staff. The culture that is promised is not a reality. There are pool and ping pong tables at the office, however, there is an awkwardness around using them and several members of the team have been pulled up by management for playing a single game as they haven’t made enough calls on that given day regardless of the number of sales that they have made that month or their track record. You have very little autonomy with managers who are constantly under fire from above pulling you up if your call time is low even if you have made several calls that day but had no luck with voicemails. There are some perks such as occasional takeaway food, however, you can only expect to get a dominoes for lunch when conveniently the head of culture’s children are in the office… If one person has an issue then it could be the case that the culture isn’t for them. When everyone is saying it, maybe there is something wrong with the culture or those in charge of it. The final point I’d make on the people in charge, certainly of the direct sales function, is that there is no genuine passion for the ‘mission’. The director has an ICE people carrier for scooting the family around in as there is apparently no suitable EV with 5 seats and the head of sales only recently agreed to give up their diesel car in exchange for an EV admitting they were reluctant to switch because they weren’t sure on an EV and didn’t actually know how a salary sacrifice worked… In summary, unless you want to become just another number in a call centre then I would look elsewhere.
