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@trisor - I left 5 years ago, so the hope is things have improved. I have no shares in Capita, and work shyness affects a lot of companies. But, it is extremely demoralising when you have people looking out the window all day, or watching sport in the office.
I worked in IT, and there was no incentive for continual improvement, and there was no incentive for innovation. That is frustrating as a person who worked there. I own no Capita shares, so have no vested interest other than "How's my old employer doing". I have to say, it was a bit like the start of the fall of the Roman Empire when I was there as a number of issues came home to roost.
Agreed @Simpiles.
Everything at Capita was cluggy. As well as having to report to 2 managers who, in total, were doing the work of 1/4 of a person, there was very little room for innovation or changing processes, or automation. I was TUPE'd to a smaller BPO firm, with fewer resources, but at least they spotted that automation was a way to save on costs. They did it in a way that created jobs for the BPO, and allowed customers (mainly councils) the chance to cut staff numbers.
At Capita I was on a second-hand, old laptop that would take 5 minutes to boot up, and whose wi-fi would intermittently cut out despite being sat practically on top of the router. I swear they killed my eyesight because I had a very flickery screen that they managed to replace with an even worse one - so I had to work from the laptop screen. I worked in IT - Application Support and Development. There was no scope for development. Products were overlicenced, that cost money.
One thing to note is that there is a mass compensation claim taking place right now for the loss of data from the Pensions breach. It was little surprise that this happened, it was a case of when, not if, and which part of Capita would get hacked.
I have now moved to the aerospace industry where there is a Security Officer and a Security Team. Maybe these exist in Capita too - I never knew of their existence, which in itself is an issue.
The biggest problem was that everyone with any ambition and skill was promoted to a manager role. Some teams had more managers than non-managers, some managers were responsible for no team members, others shared team members meaning that some of us reported to two managers.
A lot of the above was obvious to a shop-floor worker like me, so I hope it is obvious to a new CEO - but he will have to spend time in the business. Quite often, when the CEO arrived at our office we would see fawning staff putting out balloons, getting the place cleaned, and creating an impression that everything was fine when it was not. Once the CEO left, it was back to cakes and quizzes and dress-up as a pantomime character days. The CEO would have had no additional understanding of the way that that office operated, and possibly countless others around the country.
I hate to see innocent people lose their jobs, but when you are sat next to someone who is watching Wimbledon for 2 weeks from a work computer, and opposite someone who killed the wi-fi by watching Netflix shows on his personal devices, then there are also problems at a non-management level as well.
Also an ex-employee and my only surprise when I joined was how had this company been so successful. The writing was on the wall when I was TUPEd in about 7 years ago. It was in the FTSE100 then, but it was just mismanaged. On joining the company I had an additional manager to report to - it was just a beaureaucratic nightmare. At the time the share price was 421p , 12 months prior to that it was 650p.
Since leaving, I have found that my personal data has been compromised not once, but twice.