And Digital is making redundancies across half of its 25 offices.
On Glassdoor, one staff member wrote “employees have been informed that they will be contacted within 2 days if they are leaving” another said that redundancies could result in “around 240 job losses” or around 15-19 people “per club.” And Digital offices are known as “clubs.”
That was confirmed online by an And Digital Internal Communications and Engagement Lead who said:
“Given the autonomous nature of our clubs, and in line with UK legislation, each club is an independent ‘establishment’. While clubs that are impacted are looking to reduce their costs by the equivalent of around 15-19 ANDis, those that are performing and forecasting well aren’t impacted.
“The timing between when ANDis in the affected clubs found out whether they are at risk of redundancy and then whether they have been provisionally selected is to give time for the selection criteria to be applied across ANDis at risk in a fair way. This is in line with UK legislation. Going through a redundancy process is tough, and we’d hoped we’d never have to run one. ANDis will know whether they have been provisionally selected soon, and then the consultation period begins. This is the normal way that a redundancy process runs, which is, rightly, highly regulated.
In response to further criticism from staff, the spokesperson added:
“To provide wider context for those outside of the business:
In the light of the economic slowdown and the effect it’s having on the tech sector, it’s with a heavy heart that, for the first time in our history, we’ll be going through a consultation process to make a number of redundancies from around half our Clubs (our local business units) and our supporting teams in the UK.
“In the last year AND grew by 55% and we had expected to achieve a similar trajectory in 2023. We have been successful in engaging with new clients and continue to deliver with our existing clients, but the pace of growth has been much slower than we anticipated. As we now expect growth this year to be in the 20-25% range, we have taken the decision to rebalance for this lower growth environment.
“We’ve made this tough decision to make sure that we’re taking the timely and responsible actions needed to keep AND Digital on a more sustainable growth path moving forwards.
“We understand that this news will be unwelcome. We’d like to reassure people that prior to reaching this decision we explored other approaches, and will continue to do so, but these have unfortunately proven insufficient for this much slower growth rate.
“Though painful in the short term, our purpose to close the world’s digital skills gap remains the same and it also enables us to return the full ANDi experience in line with our people value proposition and to continue delivering great work in partnership with our clients. Many of the great parts of what it’s like to be ANDi have been on pause over the last few months as we’ve tried to save everything we can without impacting roles.
“We are truly sorry for the distress that this will cause to our departing ANDis, but we will do everything within our power to support those affected during the process and to set them up with the greatest chance of success in securing their next best opportunity. We remain grateful to all of our ANDis for their brilliant work.”
Prolific North has contacted the agency, which has operations in Leeds and Manchester for an official comment.
