Lack of confidence in leadership and constant threat of redundancy: 2020 marked the beginning of the end for MOO. Key players across the global team were cut, either replaced poorly or not at all. Senior leadership appeared panicked, directionless, and any belief in a positive future quickly vanished. With leaders constantly coming and going, it’s clear things aren’t healthy. Everyone worries about job security. The scale of redundancies is staggering. I can’t quite believe how many lives have been destroyed by restructuring at MOO. It makes me sick to think about what’s happened (and what’s still happening) to former colleagues. How poor can our forecasting be if redundancies are needed year after year? This is not normal. Meanwhile competitors have advanced over the past six years, and MOO seems confused as to why it’s underperforming. There’s a widespread feeling internally that MOO is a sinking ship.
Mind-numbing frustration: There is real talent across teams, which makes it even more frustrating to see people held back by senior leadership. Mistakes happen but the face mask project, as a response to covid, was beyond a joke. It took too long to produce, and most employees strongly opposed it from the start. We design and print stationery and merchandise, not PPE. Time and energy should have gone into products that could have actually moved the business forward.
Nobody senior wants to listen: Teams sit on years and years of valuable customer feedback ranging from products they’d like us to create, size and colour options they’d happily buy, to improvements to the packaging and the website, but Commercial leadership makes no effort to tap into it. There are painstakingly obvious decisions that need to be made, which all teams can see clearly, but leadership are closed off. I remember a time where leadership deemed exploring TikTok as a marketing tool a waste of resources. Now guess which social media platform the company is creating content for? It’s no surprise that even those who have not been affected by redundancies still choose to leave. That alone says everything. Nobody feels heard. Nobody feels their opinion counts. Nobody feels their ideas are valued.
Inequality and favouritism: Customer-facing teams are under immense pressure, with their days scheduled to meet a number of goals and SLAs, yet they are often the first to be cut. We are told volume-based teams are impacted due to targets not being met but somehow other teams including Brand, Creative and Social rarely face the same consequences when their efforts aren’t successful. I don’t wish redundancy upon anyone, but it does not seem fair that some teams are protected and given second chances, whilst other teams are culled time after time for reasons out of their control. It is baffling that employees who have spent years building customer relationships are let go because orders are down, when if the company were to suddenly have a surge in orders or projects, the newly-tightened teams would not have enough capacity or bandwidth to deliver successfully. Promotions are inconsistently applied. Some teams fight endlessly for deserved progression and get nowhere, while others move up rapidly with little resistance. The disparity is glaring and it does not take a genius to spot that it is the same teams being promoted each cycle. All departments should have an equal and equitable experience at MOO but even basic differences stand out: Customer Service are glued to their desks and get a 30-minute lunch break, while all other teams get a full hour. Some teams can even operate with complete freedom and leave for a canal-side coffee break whenever the mood strikes. The imbalance is hard to ignore, and it’s hard not to feel that certain groups are consistently favoured. The shift to making certain teams almost completely redundant whilst rehiring in Cape Town highlights this further. Many roles you’re seeing advertised aren’t new, they’re replacements for employees in Denver, East Providence, and London who’ve been let go. I feel so sorry for the new Cape Town hires who are entering teams stripped of experience, history, and customer understanding. They are also joining at a time when morale is yet again extremely low. I genuinely wish them well and hope they get the support needed.
Culture has been lost and now it feels forced: MOO once had a genuine, thriving culture. People enjoyed spending time together. Now culture-growing budgets are minimal or nonexistent (I will never forget the year London’s Christmas party was BYOB). Culture does not require huge spending, but it does require effort all round, and that is missing. Long-tenured employees often avoid social events altogether as anyone they would have called a friend has been made redundant. I witnessed a handful of employees attempt to rebuild culture through various initiatives, but I believe this was off the clock or on a volunteer basis. There is no visible support from senior leadership.
Lack of care: I was let go while using mental health services through the company’s health insurance. Not once did someone check whether I was dependent on those services, they were simply terminated on my last day of employment.
Company values mean nothing: Employees are expected to embody the MAKEIT values (Make it sustainable, Always deliver delight, Keep it human, Every detail counts, Imagine it better, and Tackle it together) and are evaluated on them during reviews. But in reality, they carry zero weight. You can live and breathe those values and still be cut. You can make no effort to live by the MAKEIT values and still have a job.
