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      Future

      Engaged Employer

      Future reviews

      3.2

      44% would recommend to a friend

      (712 total reviews)

      Kevin Li Ying

      60% approve of CEO

      36% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      3.6

      Diversity & inclusion

      3.3

      Work/Life balance

      3.1

      Culture & values

      3.0

      Compensation and benefits

      2.8

      Career opportunities

      2.7

      Senior management

      Future has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 712 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Future employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Mídia e comunicação industry (3.7 stars).

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Reviews by job title

      712 reviews
      2.0
      Apr 11, 2019

      Resistant to change or listen

      Content
      Recommend
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      The people I directly work with are fantastically talented, down to earth and I've learned so much from them. There's unlimited PTO (albeit with caveats, as the company has a somewhat complicated policy of what constitutes PTO and what doesn't).

      Cons

      The upper management acts as if it's actively listening to employees through surveys and messaging, but those gestures are rarely translated into any material change. They make decisions brazenly that greatly impact and affect everyone's workflow, and only realize they might have overreacted or made a mistake when the backlash inevitably happens (as in the case of the hotdesking policy, or the total lack of preparations for new employees healthcare following a major acquisition). As a quick aside with regard to healthcare and benefits, they're pretty bad -- my healthcare plan treats practically every clinic as out of network, and 401k matching is low. On the surface, management says they welcome criticism or suggestions, but it's almost always dismissed or taken as an insult. The company shows it doesn't really value its employees in those ways, but it also demonstrates that behavior in how incredibly cheap it is. If you travel by air for your job, the company will prioritize flights with layovers just to save an insignificant amount of money. If you need programs and equipment to do your job better (or, at all) you'll be met with heavy resistance from IT. One executive who spends little time in NY expressed disappointment at a perceived "lack of morale" in the office, rather than inquiring why this may have been the case, or reflecting on controversial decisions their team made that may have caused this. And the slow recognition of the union -- coupled with the company's rejection of key staff in an apparent effort of weakening the union's power -- reinforces the feeling that the company does not value the people at the bottom.

      avatar
      Future Response
      7y
      Thank you for your review of Future plc. As you know, we recently conducted a survey for our US side of the business, inviting staff to tell us what they enjoyed about working at Future and what could be improved. We received some amazing feedback, with staff highlighting how much they loved working in their teams, that they felt proud to work at Future and that they enjoyed the fast-paced culture of a global media company. While this was wonderful to see, we know that there have been challenges for our US staff which we are committed to overcoming together. As we recently communicated in our Town Hall meetings, we realise that moving everyone into one company after our acquisitions of Purch and Newbay was tough for some people. We are learning from this and making changes to ensure Future is an even better place to work. Following on from feedback, we recently altered our hotdesking policy in our New York office, allocating permanent desks to all members of staff. We have also put together an office committee, to ensure everyone has a voice and can get to know one another. If staff have any questions regarding our healthcare benefits or our company policy around travel, we encourage you to reach out to our People & Culture team. Our Head of People & Culture, is also running weekly Ask Me Anything sessions. We are committed to improving the culture of the US organisation and we can only do this if we work together to tackle the challenges.
      2.0
      Apr 11, 2019

      Future is Stuck in the Past

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Decent benefits though forget about getting much of a raise Freedom to work from home Unlimited PTO

      Cons

      - Job doesn't feel secure - We live in a modern era where video conferencing, phone calls, and airplanes make it incredibly easy to stay in touch and accomplish much without a physical location. Right after acquiring Purch, they removed all the video conferencing equipment in the Utah building and later claimed they laid off the whole building because it was "too hard" to communicate with them. They claim they want a bigger presence in the United States yet they're consolidating all the US brands to a tiny space in New York where there isn't enough room to test the many products their sites claim to test. They're also putting more work on the shoulders of fewer people. - HR and IT have been incredibly consolidated and it takes way too long to get any kind of answers or help from them. IT is also overly stingy about putting necessary software on your computers. My boss needed to add Adobe typekit to his machine so he could get the needed fonts for the multiple brands we work on and he had to jump through tons of hoops just to get that done. They treated it with way too much suspicion - like he wanted to install something malicious. - Future has acquired a ton of brands in an incredibly short amount of time and made tons of decisions about those brands without taking the necessary time to do their research and incorporate them correctly. - Senior level management seems to care more about increasing the number of brands they have and building their monetization platform than building the brands and helping them flourish. Being primarily a magazine company, they also refuse to put more effort into social media - which is huge in the United States and an almost necessary platform for advertising and increasing traffic these days. - Future is overly stingy about money in the wrong places and doesn't care enough in the right places. When traveling, you often have to share a hotel room with someone else which just screams lawsuit in the making. They immediately cut off wi-fi in the Utah building when they laid everyone off and the handful of people who were staying on with the company had to pack up 100s of thousands of dollars worth of products and equipment in a week of time and donate much of it to thrift stores. Future could have saved more money by giving the employees time to sell the equipment. Also, several of the employees had to pull 12 hour days to get the products shipped out.

      avatar
      Future Response
      7y
      Thank you for your review of Future plc. Earlier this year we made the decision to transfer our tech brand TopTenReviews, which operated out of our office in Ogden, to New York, and to close the office. While this was a hard decision to make, it was vital that TopTenReviews was no longer isolated from the rest of the company, and that the team could more easily benefit from local centralised support around SEO, deals content and testing. This was ultimately the best decision for the brand and for aligning the team with the rest of the company. As ambassadors for Future, our People & Culture and IT teams are on hand to help you whenever you need them and aim to respond to all queries within 24 hours. IT have also launched the new IT Service Hub where you can submit queries and immediately be designated a member of the IT team to help. If there is a valid business case for why you need a new piece of hardware or software, IT will always look into this for you. Future has expanded greatly over the last year due to both organic growth and acquisitions. We only acquire a company when we are sure that it fully aligns with our mission and portfolio. We appreciate that this represents change for a lot of people and know how important it is to integrate our new team members into Future. While there is still work to be done, we always listen to the feedback we get and have taken actions to ensure everyone feels part of the Future team. We agree that social media is a crucial part of boosting traffic and reaching a greater audience. Our Audience Development team plays a critical role here and works with all of our online brands to ensure they’re fully utilising SEO and social media. You can see this reflected in the Twitter followings of some of our biggest brands, such as PC Gamer and GamesRadar. We are also proud of our heritage as a publisher of magazines and believe that they are still a vital part of our success. Please reach out to the People & Culture team if you want to discuss any of these issues further at peopleandculture@futurenet.com
      2.0
      Apr 5, 2019

      The work can be fun but very little sense of security

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      The tech and music brands get to work with some cool stuff and gadgets you'd normally never have yourself Unlimited PTO policy Possibility of travel

      Cons

      Company policy doesn't allow merit-based raises, only annual cost-of-living / inflation pay increases every year. The only way to get a real raise is to get a promotion or change job position and job title. The company seems in constant flux from all the acquisitions and all the restructuring can be unsettling. Each buy out means the new people might be laid off, might replace the existing employees, or all of them get crammed in the same office. Lots of offices scattered across lots of time zones. Nearly all communication is done over email. Response time is usually slow because of the time differences.

      avatar
      Future Response
      7y
      Thank you for taking the time to leave a review of Future plc. We believe that all employees row the boat and we are very proud of our profit pool scheme which allows us to reward staff for their contribution to the business. We deliberately ensure that our targets are very clear so there is no ambiguity around this. Part of our business strategy is to grow via acquisition, which we realise means regular change - we recognise that this can be unsettling for employees. Throughout acquisition processes we try to provide as much clarity as possible to the business but encourage a business as usual approach. We value our employees greatly and want everyone to feel secure in their roles here. If you have queries, concerns or recommendations, please share with your People & Culture rep or email peopleandculture@futurenet.com.
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      Glassdoor has 785 Future reviews submitted anonymously by Future employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Future is right for you.