Just what has happened to this company? Stephen Kelly, that’s what. If you want to join Sage, tread carefully. It is NOT the company that had the great reputation years ago.
Kelly has bred a massive bullying monster that engulfs everyone from the top down to the bottom. Management are either too spineless or too petrified to push back until the bullying seeps down the organisation chart like a poison to us mortals at the bottom. And then we’re told we’re rubbish, put on Improvement Plans and shoved towards the door. Once upon a time Sage would offer help and support for employees who needed it. Now, dare to put your hand up and it’ll be taken off with a huge swinging axe, usually with your head too.
The management in my department are simply appalling. Scratching each others backs whilst showing zero leadership qualities, almost as if they’re in jobs they aren’t qualified for. But then what do you expect when their recruitment policy is to not advertise senior positions, or if they do they're done discreetly. Then they have quiet words to make sure they’re filled quickly by fellow cronies who will continue to scratch backs.
Plenty of instances of bullying have been reported, but they get thrown out after investigations held by Sage’s own senior management. Why? Because if they found one of their own guilty then it would verify and confirm all of the negative reviews on here. Sage can't have that. So they stick together and deny everything. Just read the comments made by the person employed to deny all wrongdoings on here. Barely any apologies but lots of denials.
Oh, and no-one is getting a bonus this Christmas despite the company hitting its yearly global targets. "Some might get a bonus" they say, but I bet the pot is licked dry once the fat cats have had their share.
The fat cats at the top want to create a ‘One Sage’ culture across the globe. All good. But then not sure how that’s going to be achieved when Alan Laing, Head of UK and Ireland, stood up in front of Newcastle employees and called our Berlin colleagues “those goddamn Germans”. So if you’re German, it appears he doesn’t like you.
The morale inside Sage has plummeted continuously since the day Stephen Kelly took over. He and his cronies are using prehistoric processes that force 15% of the workforce to be named as not performing each year. This is regardless of whether those named are actually performing or not. If your face doesn’t fit, or if you’re ever off sick for issues such as stress, then there’ll be a big black cross put against your name that will be impossible to scrub off. So what then happens? Good people leave and their workload is shared amongst those left. This causes more stress as workloads are then unrealistic, or people with no experience are thrust into roles they know nothing about. Again, causing stress because this is the road to being part of the 15%.
There was a rumour that this will be Kelly's last job so if that's true, he's acting like he's not bothered about the mess he’d leave behind. He surrounds himself with an air of everything is good and rejects any negative press. But colleagues who work for him are losing what little faith they have left in him, if there's any left at all.
Overall this is a crying shame. An inflated share price masks the bullying and lack of humanity that goes on inside the walls. Sage's employees have lives, families, mortgages, careers but all that means nothing if you're labelled in that 15%.
So to end this review I'll pick my words carefully again: tread carefully.
