Octopus Energy reviews

Recognition: it’s an absolute joke. People work insane hours and get very little recognition. The finance transformation team recently won a big award, which is amazing. Instead of telling us why he nominated the team for the award, the Group FC spent time talking about getting drunk at the awards ceremony. I think a lot of us would rather he spent time recognising the small wins than spending time submitting award applications or talking about getting drunk at award ceremonies. What about the rest of us who work hard to get the books closed each month or work crazy hours to get suppliers and employees paid on time? I guess if there is no award for closing month end while doing audit and while doing a major accounting system implementation, you don’t get recognition… No HR: 5k+ employees and no HR? It’s shocking that there hasn’t been a public scandal. Managers don’t know how to be managers. They aren’t taught to show compassion or empathy. Who do you go to when you have issues with your manager? Resign, I guess. Terrible remuneration and promotion opportunities: I had to write a business case last year in order to have my salary increased to align with three different benchmarking studies I obtained. It shouldn’t have to be so hard to get paid fairly. Drinks in the office on a Friday and hoodies don’t make up for paying staff fairly. Drug and alcohol focused workplace in London: come Fridays, it’s a free for all with company provided drinks. Go into the loos and you’ll see people taking drugs. It’s not safe. I don’t drink, so I no longer come into the office on a Friday. No policies or processes: yeah, it’s cool to have start-up vibes, but Octopus isn’t a start-up and people need (and want) policies and processes to guide them. The award that the finance transformation team recently won was in the enterprise category, up against Amazon… There are no policies or processes meaning that some people take the micky and get away with it. If your manager is chill, you’ll go out for team drinks and get gifts because no one polices it. Want to do some kind of professional learning? You’ll have to beg for it.

The energy sector is extremely complex and training is inadequate for what you’re expected to do. There isn’t much training once you’re out in the wild unless you want to specialise in something, so refreshing understanding of things still unfamiliar isn’t a realistic opportunity. Jumping on calls, which never seem to end even when scheduled for emails, it causes no end of stress and would often lead to burnout as the revolving door of employees continued. 0 work/life balance, expected to work longer hours to get things done, overtime isn’t paid and you can’t bank it as flexi time which I’m able to do in my current role. I was informed of this as part of my interview and it already left a bad taste before starting to work, there is no incentive to do extra hours other than fear which existed. 0 HR is the biggest concern, I know it’s under the guise of having a flat management structure and an understanding of what’s going on. In reality if there was an HR in place there would be fit notes from GPs rife within the company, workloads would be limited and some Managers/ Team Leaders would be reprimanded. Having Team Leaders as your senior, your HR, your mate, etc simply isn’t productive for this kind of environment especially when everyone is very young and might not have the experience to take this on, it’s also worrying where your concerns and worries go once they are voiced. Very cliquey work environment, naturally the case with so many young people. It’s based on if your face fits with how people treat you and promotion prospects, it’s a bit like Lord of the Flies.