Pros
Homeserve is a business that really does care about it's customers and their employees. Some of the pros are: - Customer First - A special team that we can refer our customers too if they are in a particularly difficult situation because of their life circumstances, or if they have an issues that their policy doesn't actually cover but we try to help with. - Excellent facilities - I work in the Preston site and in the just under 3 years I've been here they've invested in the building and making it a pleasant place to work, canteen is pretty decent and fairly priced. Tea and coffee is provided for free which is great. - Listens to feedback from employees - When I started in 2017 the lines of communication between senior management and the frontline employees like myself was essentially non-existent but when a lot of us spoke about it in the annual survey they listened and established weekly communications between the various departments and the work they are carrying out. - Regular updates from the CEO - So Greg Reed our CEO does a weekly email that updates us on what is going on in the company as whole and sharing encouragement. It's always a highlight even if some of it goes over my head. Also we can request a 1-2-1 with him at any point and that's really good. The transparency is super helpful - Care for the people (employees) - There's lots of benefits given, particuarly through the benefits system in place, the comprehensive pension, the options to buy stock. Also the aforementioned facilities. Also if you do have kids there's some good flexibility options so that you can get the kids to school and so forth - Chances for advancement - So in my time here I started on Claims dealing with inbound calls, after about 7 months I was trained up on how to do deployment (which is finding engineers when there's no availability at that point) about 4 months after that I was granted the responsibility of joining the POC outbound call team (calling customers with updates in relation to their chase calls) and then off the back of that working on the excess refunds team on a rotational basis. Then in March 2019 I joined the complaints team on a loan basis and was there for a year and a half. - Supportive for those with long term illness- In my time here I've seen a significant number of colleagues go off sick for a long time and they've continued to be paid reasonably even with their reduction in work and when they've returned they've been welcomed back to a job still waiting for them and are gently reintroduced to their role - Responded incredibly well to COVID-19 - So the business got everyone able to work from home within 2 weeks of the lockdown being initiated, they made sure no one gets furloughed and has been able to carry on living well. - Pay is very fair
Cons
Inflexible at times - Sometimes the business can be really rigid over things that are in contrast to their values. Two examples would be that in my first year I submitted a flexible working request so that I could have off a certain day of the week as my regular day off for relgious reasons and they refused, even though I was offering to work more than my colleagues so that I could have this day. - You can be heavily penalised for short term illness - The absence policy is quite harsh and while in one way I can understand the business reason given we are a 24 hr business it is really punishing at times. So in a 12 month period if you are ill for more than 5 days or have two instances of absence due to sickness then you go on your first stage warning which has no immediate consequences anymore it used to be you would lose your bonus. If while you're on your first stage warning (which lasts for 12 months) and are ill for a further 5 days or have 2 more instances of absence from illness then you go to your 2nd stage warning and lose your bonus. If you get to 3rd stage then it's employment terminated. - Some of the shifts can be pretty awful when on claims - But they are working on it to be fair.