Are you job hunting or looking to jump ship from your present place of employment? No matter what your answer may be, there are companies you should never work for. It is in your best interest to avoid working for these companies.
The last thing you want to do is to jeopardise the enthusiasm and career that you have spent years to build by working with a company that kills your career growth and career development opportunities. To avoid fall into this trap, we will take a good look at some of the crucial things you need to look out for.
Unprofessional Coworkers
Professionalism within the workplace should never be compromised. Let us put this into perspective. If you realise that a company you work for allows something like sexual harassment and other unprofessional conducts to happen repeatedly without addressing it as an issue, it should stand out as one of the companies you should never work for.
Your dressing, employee interaction, insubordination and harassment are all examples of unprofessionalism in the workplace.
Stagnates Your Career
A stagnated career is a career devoid of motivation and growth. It burns you out to a point where you are no longer innovative or giving your best to the job. It is important to steer clear of companies that stagnate your career regardless of whether you are at the entry-level, mid-level or senior-level professional. You should be on the lookout for opportunities to grow your career and not staying stuck on a job that prevents you from experiencing true career growth.
One of the companies you should never work for is one that promotes micromanagement and provides no training or learning opportunities. Such an organisation has no clear opportunities for promotion. You are not duly rewarded for your performance at work and the job does not offer new challenges beyond your job description.
Rigid Communication Channel
Communication is important in every organisation. It is so important that companies encourage the culture communicating across different levels. You should stay away from companies where only the ideas of top management and executives are reign supreme over employees who are not allowed to make any input whatsoever. In such companies, you are considered a foot soldier who is confined to following instructions and contributing smart ideas to help the company grow. Your career growth is either non-existent or static.
Such companies have a culture of micromanaging people. They promote the culture of fear, hardly promote open door policies and never thrive on innovation or credit to staff because top management takes it all.
Companies You Should Never Work For Have Bad Reputation
It is no longer a secret that a company can live or die on the strength of its reputation. As an employee, you are one of the biggest ambassadors of the company you work for. This explains why people take what you say about your company seriously. For instance, if you run into an old friend and ask, “Hey! I’m trying to get a better job. Is your company hiring?” What would you say if your friend replies by saying, “You better keep searching… The company has not paid us for 4 months?”
A company that has a reputation for owing salaries has a bad reputation. Avoid such companies.
Bad At Retention
A company that continuously recruits for the same position over a very short period of time is a company you should never work for. The fact that employees are constantly leaving a company after a short period reflects a bad culture. A good company strives to improve its employee retention strategies and not the other way around.
Promise and Fail
A company that makes promises to you and repeatedly fails to deliver on those promises is one you should never work for do not live up to their obligations to you. Any company that puts you last in the scheme of things and focuses squarely on revenue without considering things like your work environment and job satisfaction is a company you should never work for.
Alternate Points of View Are Not Tolerated
If a company you work for has a culture of shutting down ideas that are different from what the management has communicated without being objective, it is a wrong signal.
If the reasons for shutting down your ideas are things like “We have never done that before…” or “We don’t have time to run XYZ test,” it has established itself as one of the companies you should never work for. The fact that a point of view or idea is alternate to what was originally communicated does not mean it should be shut down subjectively.
