They'll make you play the violin while the ship sinks
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
It pays your bills and allows you to look for a decent job on the side.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
All of the above.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
I have no advice or kind words to spare for the management, except maybe to tone it down when asking their employees to write fabricated reviews in here to pump up their overall rating (it's really obvious that they're not legitimate). But for employees: look into joining a union. DGB has info in English. Don't trust the management or HR no matter how amiable they seem. They're not your friends. Try to know your rights because they'll try to take advantage of you in as many gray areas as they can, especially if you don't speak German.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Note: I was asked by the site to remove some parts of my review upon external demand. These contained feedback that was deemed problematic; having employees no official way of proving these events, unfortunately I had to comply.
My feedback applies mostly to the department I worked in. Because I’m not naming any names, let’s call this department Kursverwaltung for its equivalent in German (from now on abbreviated as KV).
At the beginning of my contract, the atmosphere was slightly more tolerable because LS had not acquired GlobalEnglish yet. They still needed us monkeys to grind away for them and create wealth in the form of courses and contractual relationships that they could later turn into profit (not into better salaries and conditions, no: what a waste that'd be). Therefore, they would make superficial efforts toward keeping us content. However, after September 2019 it became increasingly obvious that KV employees were now viewed as an expensive nuisance. The upper management became more neglectful and would talk nonchalantly of making us redundant “for the greater good of the company”. Our surroundings also deteriorated rapidly.
Kommunikation
Performative, strategically opaque at best; non-existent at worst.
After the management received feedback that not enough information was permeating to their employees, we saw an increase in the number of weekly updates, private meetings, “catch-up”s and the like. These didn't seem to have a goal beyond maintaining appearances and “boosting morale”, aka telling employees what good boys and girls they are for gritting their teeth and going on with the show in exchange for crumbs.
In those rare occasions where bad news were delivered openly, a big emphasis was placed on looking on the bright side of things; a sentiment that may be fitting for emotional therapy sessions or self-help quotes, but grossly inappropriate to force on employees when they are suffering the consequences of poor managerial decisions. The most insulting example I can think of has already been mentioned in previous reviews: it was announced once, very casually, that an entire department would be dismissed and we were told not to worry about them because “they would surely find another job soon”.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
KV has some brilliant, talented, generous, hard-working and interesting people working for them. And it’s crucial for the upper management to ensure that none of these people ever reach any higher positions so that the Big Bosses can continue doing the bare minimum.
It was sad to see colleagues who were otherwise good and friendly people fall into the dynamic of dog-eat-dog over a supermarket cashier’s salary. (Mind you, at least the cashier’s job is contributing to society. Ours only contributed to making the Big Bosses and their investors richer).
Work-Life-Balance
LS's policies for breaks and holidays are miserly and I'm using a kind word here. Unpaid breaks policy that forces their fulltime employees to stay in the workplace for 9 hours. Total amount of holidays way below the national average (employees were "awarded" an extra day of holiday toward the end of 2019, after they begged for it for years, and the upper management backpedalled and took it away from them not even three months later, using the excuse of the CoVID crisis). Weird acrobatics around allowing frontline employees to work from home, with suggestions being made that they couldn't be trusted to perform well (pre-pandemic, but even post-outbreak, they delayed generalized home office as much as they possibly could). Employees being threatened with not having their holidays approved on time by their superiors. Employees being forced to cut their holidays in two and come to the office on a low workload day. I could go on for hours.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Of all supervisors I’ve had in my life, these were the appallingly worst at their job and most unwilling to do anything beyond taking credit for their subordinates’ work. Here’s the tip of the iceberg of things my supervisors did during the couple of years I worked at LS:
•(Edited out: feedback involving computer screens - I was urged to remove it since unfortunately my colleagues and I have no way of proving it.)
•Unloaded advanced tasks onto new, untrained employees. I'm talking a week into the job.
•Organized fake interviews for positions that had already been appointed to someone else behind the scenes.
•Refused to support the team in times of very high workload while reporting the opposite to their superiors. All other supervisors helped their teams.
•Threatened and yelled at employees over “personal attacks” (that is, when given polite negative criticism about failure to support the team).
•Pressured employees to come to the office on time during extreme weather events (Storm Sabine) and the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Germany.
•Refusing to help employees working in a room at 32 degrees Celsius.
Interessante Aufgaben
“Most people would feel insulted if they were employed in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back to earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed nowadays”. -Henry David Thoreau
Gleichberechtigung
(Edited out: feedback involving unequal treatment - I was urged to remove it since unfortunately my colleagues and I have no way of proving this)
The job offers marked with "no German skills needed" were the worst paid in the company, the most precarious, with the highest turnover rate.
Picking up the topic of sexual harassment from another review, several female employees informally reported being filmed without consent and having their personal space invaded by a male colleague during the last office summer party I attended to in 2019. This male colleague exhibited the exact same behaviour in the office party that took place two years earlier. Another male employee was known to make inappropriate comments at a different party.
I find it frankly pathetic that the HR department has the audacity to threaten reviewers with legal action when they speak up on sexual harassment anonymously.They do it anonymously because they know reports to HR always fall on deaf ears if they involve any real effort.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
Have you heard of elderly poverty? People prefer to avoid it. That's why there aren't many employees over the age of 35 in LS. Those who were, were usually in higher positions or had a passion for the job which I sincerely cannot understand.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Here’s a list of relevant events:
-A colleague had to sit with their back to a bare window for months before someone came and installed blinds for them, by which time it had already caused them vision problems
-HR later asked us to “prepare” for a safety inspection by moving our desks if we were sitting with our backs to a window. Yes, instead of installing blinds.
-Our immediate superior ignored our cries for help when the temp in our room well exceeded 32 degrees (heatwave of July 2019). One of us started feeling unwell and finally had to leave. This went on for several days until the heatwave receeded.
-Part of the ceiling in one of the offices collapsed after a big storm, with water leaking directly onto an electrical box. This remained unrepaired for months on end. Some paper tissues were taped on to the box for good measure, though.
-Employees asked not to “loiter” in one of the kitchens after the Big Bosses decided to turn it into their VIP-only coffee room.
-High workload/staff cuts combo makes it impossible to properly support trainers.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
LS is the perfect example of corporate eco-hypocrisy in which they are currently providing services for companies that are in the list of responsibles for over 70% of total carbon emissions, deforestation and plastic waste (again, no names but let’s say there’s a big A and a big N in there) while releasing quirky newsletters advising their employees to cycle to work and take showers instead of baths.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Big Red Flag: companies that brag about having a "young, multicultural team". Of "being a big family".
Young employees means you can push them out more easily and pay them less for more work. They're millennials so they shouldn't expect more than that, right?
Multicultural means a majority of your workforce is white Europeans with one/two "foreign" faces and names to fill the quota. (Edited out: feedback involving unequal treatment - I was urged to remove it since unfortunately my colleagues and I have no proof of this spoken conversation).
Being a big family means you will try to earn your naive employees' friendship by offering them good doggy treats (the odd free beer and donut) and then emotionally manipulating them into smiling thru the pain. It means that even though your profits are growing every year you won't raise their salaries or hire more people to make the workload manageable – but here, you’re giving them a fancy new coffee machine! Aren’t they lucky to work for such a nice company?
Image
An exercise in smoke and mirrors.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Not in the department I worked in. Not in most departments.