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      Sage

      Engaged Employer

      Sage reviews

      3.6

      63% would recommend to a friend

      (5,253 total reviews)
      avatar

      Steve Hare

      71% approve of CEO

      60% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      3.9

      Diversity & inclusion

      3.7

      Compensation and benefits

      3.6

      Work/Life balance

      3.5

      Culture & values

      3.4

      Career opportunities

      3.2

      Senior management

      Sage has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 5,253 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Sage employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Reviews by job title

      5K reviews
      1.0
      Apr 27, 2017

      Couldn't recommend it to my worst enemy!

      Account manager
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Sage has managed to employ some exceptional people. The support, training and enablement staff especially are highly knowledgeable and massively under-appreciated.

      Cons

      To be very specific, my experiences are related to Sales Division based in Manchester. Where do I begin! If you are considering a role at Sage, do read all the reviews. Please note the recent influx of overly positive reviews (Sage actively encourage employees to post positive reviews on Glassdoor and actually have employed a full time individual to troll the negative reviews, she will be along shortly). Also note that negative reviews carry the same same themes e.g.lack of ethics, bullying, favouritism, leading with fear etc. In my personal experience, I've seen some horrendous bullying take place. The business has a policy of hiring more people than required, then using the 3 month probation period as a trial before picking and choosing their favourites. If you stand up for yourself, you're a troublemaker. If you complain because the business is not fulfilling its contractual obligations, you're a troublemaker. If you do anything other than smile and nod, you are a troublemaker. If you try and take holiday, you're a troublemaker. If you get deemed to be a troublemaker and don't have exceptional results by the end of your probation, you will be fired. If you get through your probation period, little actually changes. Although Sage do have policy in place for performance improvement and disciplinary, they completely ignore it, and the business likes to remind you that the axe is hanging above your head every day Your comp plan will require you to hit 70% before you earn a bonus (its not really commission) and at that point you get paid about 1/3. The business reserves (and regularly uses) the right not to pay earned bonuses. Accelerators are in place but require you to hit at least three metrics two month in a row. 'Commission' plans (with targets) are issued monthly. Quite often the plan isn't communicated until past the middle of the month and more often than not the targets are revised at least once after that. On the subject of comp and if its relevant to you, mileage realistically pays out between 8 and 13p/mile, some way off HMRC's recommendation of 45p. Accountants Division itself is in a terrible mess. I believe its seen something like 12 different leaders in the last 10 years. I've personally seen 3 different managers in the last 15 months (the first two are no longer with the business). Staff turnover is a major issue. The biggest issues lie with middle management, who have far too much autonomy over their staff members for an organisation this size. As I alluded to above, management don't have to follow any process relating to HR, so appraisals, performance improvement etc. They can, and regularly do, under and overpay individuals based on favouritism, and regardless of performance. Unfortunately the whole working culture just seems to be rotten, and its perpetuated by staff who have grown up in that system. Luckily for you though (if you choose to ignore my advice), Xero, Intuit, Iris, CCH, Digita and Brightpay are currently ripping through Sage's client base like a hot knife through butter, so the suffering won't last too much longer!

      avatar
      Sage Response
      9y
      Thanks for the review. There's a couple of things that need putting straight here. You refer to me in your review, so I can say with total honesty and integrity I have never asked for positive reviews. I ask for honest reviews - I can share with you the email if you wish (contact me - lynne.ellis-parker@sage.com), it would be corporate suicide to ask for honest/fake reviews. We ask for reviews as this is common practice and actually advice from Glassdoor. Also, this is not my full-time job (I'd be pretty bored if it was!) I do a multitude of other things, again if you wish to contact me I am happy to talk to you about what I do. On to more serious issues - if you do read the other reviews I assume you read my responses where I say we never tolerate bullying and we have an anonymous helpline to ensure colleagues can confidentially report it. See our Code of Conduct on the Sage Academy, and you and all colleagues here have access to the free and confidential ‘Safecall’ line in the event you wish to draw attention to any wrongdoing. I wold urge you to contact them so your concerns can be addressed - we don't take this lightly, we don't want bullies at Sage. We are very proud of our colleagues who build, develop, market and sell awesome tech and support our business builders. Our award winning products developed by the very best talent (our colleagues) range from Sage One which is very keenly priced and is the essential cloud accounting and payroll system that empowers entrepreneurs, start-ups and small businesses right across the globe. Then there's Sage Live - the most powerful cloud business management solution with accounting at its core. Built for the small to medium-sized businesses looking to unleash the power to grow, while minimising complexities of scale. We also have Sage Pay, Payments, Sage People, Sage Accountant Cloud and of course Sage X3. No other business in the world offers these range of products across the spectrum - from the sole trader right up to enterprise ...we really are unique. And, none of this can be achieved without dynamic, dedicated, smart talent - we thank each and every committed colleague - we are nothing without you. Thanks again.
      1.0
      Nov 21, 2018

      Avoid at all costs. Toxic management throughout the organization

      Implementation specialist
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      It's a step up from retail work, I guess?

      Cons

      With Steven Kelly gone, many of us thought that we would finally see some positive change from the leadership side of things. Unfortunately, we were very wrong. Steve Hare has now shown his true colors, doubling down on blaming the employees and acting like his good old boys club isn't part of the problem at all. In our last company-wide meeting, when asked about our culture of fear and backstabbing, he presented us with a veiled threat that anyone criticizing management's decisions would be fired. This organization is 100% toxic, starting at the very top. Do not accept an offer here, this company is terrible.

      1.0
      Jun 7, 2018

      Objective based company with a CEO that's determined to destroy the business

      Software developer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      - Free parking - Alright but expensive food

      Cons

      The company works on a performance curve in departments which forces people to be marked down into lower tiers, this system was denied to exist this year by the CEO Stephen Kelly in an internal broadcast, but lone behold after the falling sales targets it magically made a return to stop people progressing and getting bigger bonuses (if any), seems like a cost cutting exercise to me (along with laying off senior staff and sales staff to make up the short fall in cash). Seems to be his philosophy is somethings going wrong? let's fire a bunch of people to make myself look better instead of thinking it might be me who's the issue which according to a lot of the reviews on here he is. The upper levels of management or whoever created them have gave the business a set of 6 objectives that you must fill, no matter what role you're in apparently. These involve stuff that has NOTHING to do with the job description you're hired under, for example one of the objectives; Customer Obsession. As a Developer I'm hired to DEVELOP software that the company asks for, I'm sure in some departments these objectives fit into their agenda but not for R&D. Deadlines aren't set by the development team, it doesn't matter if you're asked how long it'll take and it'll take 2 months longer than the release date to implement it, marketing will tell you how long it'll take and that's your deadline date. Everybody in the department is graded based on the same criteria, it doesn't matter if you're a junior or a senior you're all expected to do the same amount of work to meet the expectations of the business, and if you're not; you're failing the company and need to improve. Fantastic way to motivate your staff! Some more stuff to do with the business such as technical support roles being give a sales target when they're here to help solve issues with the program is just funny in my opinion, "My program isn't working can you help?" - "Yes but first let me try and sell you another part of the program that probably won't work and you really won't need"; comical. There's a lot of reviews on here from apprentices; strange because it seems to be that 75% of them have left the business, why are they writing 5 star reviews about the business and then leaving? Seems like an objective to me, along with the objective to reach 4 stars on here. I look forward to the copy and pasted response about thanks for the feedback that won't be fed back to anyone in the company because they don't really care as long as moneys flowing in.

      Viewing 10 - 12 of 5,253 Reviews
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      Glassdoor has 6,274 Sage reviews submitted anonymously by Sage employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Sage is right for you.