Monks reviews

3.3

58% would recommend to a friend

(1,288 total reviews)
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Sir Martin Sorrell | Wesley ter Haar | Bruno Lambertini

30% approve of CEO

34% positive business outlook

Monks has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 1,288 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Monks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media & Communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
1.0
Jun 15, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Health benefits are truly great and the HR team works really hard to make sure the benefits offered are competitive with industry leaders (often matching those of tech clients). The individuals you work with daily are exceptional and (almost) everyone is willing to bend over backward to help you and your project succeed. Good place to hone your craft if you can land on the right account/team.

Cons

Salaries are not competitive. Simple things that are regular part of keeping a business operational are riddled with mistakes or missing altogether (like multiple years of errors and corrections on W2s, or new hires starting without getting a company computer for multiple days). Requirements on recruiting make filling empty roles difficult, with little concern about employee attrition. This often requires people taking on more than their fair share of work for weeks even months at a time, without any additional compensation. No employee handbook. Some processes exist, but are not easy to surface. Everything is handled word-of-mouth or via slack. No communication on where to actually find answers, paired with a sense of annoyance when you ask someone for help or if a process exists. Company is self-described as being "disruptive" which is 100% accurate, but not in the cool industry-leading way it is intended... No, your day will constantly be disrupted by too many internal communications channels, too many meetings, too many "culture" updates that don't actually apply to most of the company, and a complete lack of organization and process. Communication is severely lacking, with IT, HR, and leadership being non- responsive to questions without multiple "friendly bumps" often taking weeks to respond if at all. Lots of duplication across too many internal comms channels. Annual performance reviews were a disaster with 6mo delays on raises/promotions. C-level micromanages all decisions creating massive bottlenecks. Mid-level managers are left as scapegoats for a company lacking leadership. Smoke screens and gaslighting around finances and performance of the company.

1.0
Jun 6, 2025

Seriously. Don't do it.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Solid healthcare benefits for an agency. - A few talented, kind people doing their best in a deeply broken system.

Cons

This place is not what it pretends to be. What looks like a forward-thinking, agency from the outside is actually a chaotic, toxic holding company stitched together from dozens of acquisitions with no real integration, values, or leadership. - Layoffs happen constantly and without warning. One minute you're collaborating with a teammate, the next they're deactivated in Slack mid-project, and leadership pretends nothing happened. No explanation, no transparency, no humanity. It’s real-life Hunger Games. -Fear is the dominant culture. Everyone is walking on eggshells, unsure if their role will exist next week. The whisper network is stronger than any official communication. - Leadership is reckless and unprofessional. The CEO regularly sends all-staff "Sunday night emails" — rambling rants often laced with political opinions. No boundaries. Just pure ego. - There’s no strategy. Just buzzwords and fire drills. Teams work in silos, projects stall, and leadership points fingers instead of taking responsibility. - There’s an Instagram account dedicated to exposing the mess here — and sadly, it’s accurate. - The financials speak volumes. Look up S4 Capital’s stock performance. That’s your red flag in plain sight.

2.0
Jul 19, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

+ Mediamonks has one of the most comprehensive health benefits packages I’ve seen, including family planning and mental health benefits. Worth one star on its own. + Their client list looks good on a resume/portfolio (if that sort of thing is important to you) + They seem to embrace a hybrid work environment where you’re able to work remotely or in the office at your discretion which I find to be ideal. + I genuinely enjoy the agency culture here. There are plenty of social events, skill development sessions, etc. and the people here are generally chill, smart and cool to work with. However, the company is so large that bad accounts/demanding clients can overwrite the “chill” vibe so your mileage may vary.

Cons

- A lot of the clients are needlessly demanding and this adds an unnecessary amount of difficulty managing scope and changes within a project. Clients typically don’t understand and properly identify KPIs and objectives when scoping projects and this causes lots of scope creep during projects. This translates into late nights and weekends for some teams. - As others have mentioned, this place went on a mass-acquisition spree so there are a lot of operational process knots that have to be untangled that cause a lot of unnecessary slow down on projects. - This place loves meetings. Internal meetings. External meetings. Every project you’re on has a standup, a check-in, a client status, a tech status, and that’s not counting the meetings you may have with individual teams just to get the work done. You can easily spend half of your week sitting in meetings here and wonder how you’re expected to get your work done. - A lot of people are burned out here. I think that MM does their best to fight burnout and while they certainly try to support employees that need a break (they do allow comp days and there are tons of resources internally), I don’t believe they address the root cause (bad clients, bad projects, staffing issues, etc)

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Glassdoor has 2,937 Monks reviews submitted anonymously by Monks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Monks is right for you.