I worked at one of their malt distilling sites and was sacked less than a year into my employment, after making an honest mistake leading to a small loss of product, when asked to do something as a favour which was not my job. I was the sole person responsible for looking after the site’s waste treatment plant, and senior management asked me to carry out a sampling task involving open valves at the distillery, a site for which I was not actually inducted to work on (which is supposedly mandatory), and not familiar enough with in terms of layout. I wasn’t trained, shown what to do, had seen any work instruction etc. and my simple mistake, along with a poor design of equipment allowed an escape of liquid from a vessel.
Even with the correct knowledge and training, it was a mistake that could have been made by anyone, and all I could was apologise in the subsequent investigation meeting and disciplinary hearing which took place a month afterwards. During the time between, I was stopped from doing the job I was actually employed for, and the senior manager I reported to behaved as though I had done it intentionally, essentially ignoring me for the rest of the time I was there. Some of the facts stated by the senior managers I was interviewed by during the first meeting and disciplinary were actually incorrect, and near the end of the latter, I had to sit and wait for almost three hours for a decision to be made after having already spent two being questioned about the incident. I was told I had been “risk-blind” and everything I did before, during and after the incident was wrong. Therefore I was dismissed on the grounds of misconduct and essentially frog-marched off the site. Self-righteous nonsense would be the politest way of describing this. They think they could sell snow to Eskimos.
The people I worked with said that it was ultimately the fault of the management this had happened, but as is typical, they are totally absolved of any responsibility. They spend hours and hours every day sitting in pointless meetings, where they colour in and tick boxes, congratulating themselves and each other on the company social networking service, whilst they ignore the real issues and the lines of contractors who can’t start the work they’ve been hired to do until they’ve been seen. When something happens they will do what they can to cover-up anything that could get them in trouble with the regulatory bodies (with which they are on very thin ice), and throw the lower level workers straight under the bus.
Everyone said that Diageo used to be a great company to work for, but they are certainly not now, and big changes in attitude and culture over the last 12-18 months have alienated a huge number of their workforce. Historically, they have always demonised their employees when they have done something wrong, even non-deliberately, and it is unbelievable what they have actually managed to get away with dismissing people for. They cannot start a witch-hunt quickly enough and are more willing to provide the resource for this instead of helping and training their staff, which is disgusting from a company of that size and reputation. This, along with the cutbacks associated with corporate greed seen everywhere now, and increasing pressures with unreasonable and ridiculous expectations, especially from a now largely inexperienced workforce, have forced employees with as much as 20-30+ years of experience to take early retirement or leave to work for their competitors.
For an operational type-role at least, I would strongly advise anyone to avoid this company, unless you have no other choice. It’s very easy to make a mistake when interacting with plant processes, and with their attitude, you’ll be living in fear of this and have zero job security.
