I joined a start up company as a part time finance manager. In the interview the founder said that he thought I had the accounting skills and he could help me take the next step in terms of looking at strategy etc
I started the role and was building out processes for basic financial procedures that weren't there before. I was thinking that this was his plan to get this stuff out of the way first.
Then a high ranking woman got called to a dismissal meeting and fired on the same day. At the time I didn't think too much of it as I had been cc'd in emails where she had been less polite to the clients than I would have been – I thought potentially they were right to fire her but did it in a bad way.
Her grievance was that the founder was sexist though at the time I thought this was maybe bitterness.
Then I have my probation meeting (10 days after my probation lapsed) and my probation period has been extended by 2 months. In the last 3 months I haven't received a single communication to say that my performance was unsatisfactory on anything non minor. Apparently the problem is that I'm not providing the higher level management service they wanted from me as in analysis and suggestions for strategy. They say I have the ability to do this..I've never been encouraged or asked to do this or treated like a high level member of staff and I've not been provided with any meaningful ways to meet their criteria.
On this I had a look through the employee files and can see that around 8 women have been dismissed over the last few months. Noone who has been described as a poor performer has successfully improved their performance since their appraisal and they've been dismissed. There was hardly any documentation and what little documentation there was did not give valid reasons for dismissal. Reasons for dismissal included 'poor body language, 'lack of poker face' and 'having a drink at the company social'.