Our company went into administration recently. This was the direct result of numerous and continuous fuck ups by several members of the upper management, which was unfortunate as there was a good core of people who were great to work with.
And while there were plenty of fuck ups, there were also some pretty decent working arrangements. WFH wasn't standard, but we all had VPN's installed and if we needed to be away from the office for something we could have WFH approved (car getting work done, dr's appointments etc), plus as mentioned before, below a certain level the majority of staff were great to work with, including lower level managers. We were also on 37.5 hour work weeks with early finish on a Friday.
So when administration was on the horizon (it wasn't a surprise, we knew we were running out of cash for months) many people started reluctantly looking for new work.
Administration comes around and while some people have been speaking to recruiters (myself included) no one has left yet. During the administration process a company we have supplied to regularly comes in and buys us, promising to keep all staff on and make improvements.
They came in all smiles and promised to make us better and more streamlined. Except WFH was completely off the table now, it wasn't within the new companies standards practice… Oh and if you forgot to clock in you weren't paid, yes this includes salaried office staff, and if you're late clocking in you were deducted pay (I'm still looking into this as I'm pretty sure under UK law they can't do that unless it's in your contract… Which is isn't in ours). Oh and all those promises the previous administration made about pay rises and role changes, not happening, sorry wasn't our promises. There were also numerous instances of people being on calls only to find that several members of upper management from the parent company were working from home… Thought that wasn't standard practice?
Did I mentioned before a lot of people had already been speaking to recruiters? I was aware that myself and at least 3 members of our team continued speaking to recruiters… The others decided to give it a couple of months to see how things went. Several members of my team handed in notice 3-4 weeks ago. Within that time the new upper management started to show their true colours, yelling at staff, setting unrealistic delivery dates etc. so more started talking to recruiters.
Then this week they fired 4 members of staff causing one other to resign (2 of these were members of our 3 man purchasing team essentially crippling our ability to purchase materials and parts), 3 more people have been offered new jobs and have all resigned (this included the entirety of the engineering design team and their line manager, one of the longest serving members of the previous company and one of the only people who knows the ins and outs of the designs of the things we make, thereby crippling our ability to produce manufacturing designs/ drawings). One of the people they fired was one of two project managers, the other is just waiting on details for a job offer and if he's happy he will also be resigning, crippling our ability to manage any projects…
In the space of a month they have gone from a team of 20 odd to a team of 10, with at least 2 of those looking for a new job right now, possibly more.
Fuck around and find out I guess…