Disappointing - Anonymous employee Etex Employee Review

1.0
Mar 25, 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Large Company with cash in the bank due to deep pocketed owners (a multinational). Used to be Lafarge owned and operated (the "good old days"). Good product that sells itself at a premium price. No problem meeting Payroll (although they always seem to mess up your overtime).

Cons

They know how to attract top talent (talk a good fight, promise you the earth, moon and stars, etc.), but just can't retain them. They state they want the best people for the job, but then ignore, frustrate, undermine and demotivate them until they leave. The dead wood that remains in charge is killing the company. More meetings take place than you would believe. Nothing meaningful is ever achieved. It's very much a 'fear and blame culture', with over-paid and lazy senior Managers, that don't care about anything but themselves, simply maintaining enough apparent activity to rake in their fat cheques whilst doing as little as possible. Short-sighted Management style. Morale is virtually non-existent. A recent Best Companies type survey result was frankly damning and has been hushed up Management in a constant state of denial and disassociation. Bullying Senior Managers get HR to dish out Disciplinaries to staff (as a control by fear mechanism) who can't cope with ever increasing and often unrealistic workloads, mainly due to ever increasing delegation by lazy Managers who sit around drinking coffee/tea fetched by errand boys/girls whilst they bark out orders, full of their own importance, belittling and talking down to lesser staff, whilst they themselves cherry pick the tasks they fancy, take credit for the hard work, ideas and efforts of lesser staff, whilst surfing the web, watching sport, reading e-mails, watching internet videos, booking holidays and flicking through screens and shuffling paper pretending to 'work' when spotted. Anyone with any spark in them gets disillusioned and inevitably moves on. We witnessed some excellent people who were excellent hires, bright, committed and hard-working, very good at their work and got along with people well, etc., arrive positive and motivated and leave disillusioned and negative. Investigate the high churn rate on new employees yourself, which says everything. Many return to their former employers (as have I), and generally leave not long after they have successfully completed probation. These are excellent people working under poor Management who no longer see a positive reason to stay. Siniat is a Space Shuttle Piloted by Monkeys. NB: Seem to treat their suppliers with similar distain.

Explore other reviews about Etex

5.0
Oct 28, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

they take care of their employees

Cons

ongoing restructuring of operations team

1.0
Aug 15, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I'd genuinely struggle to tell you. Anything I thought was good going in quickly ebbed away. I had other offers but I thought this place would have a decent culture (even though the pay was a bit naff) and opportunities to grow - how wrong I was!

Cons

The job you will do will not be the job advertised to you advertised There is a clock and dagger culture, with lots of backstabbing HR pull the strings of the managers, as opposed to managers being empowered to lead but ironically the HR team doesn't understand basic employment law There are ridiculous layers of bureaucracy, meaning lots of talk and meetings, but little action

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