RAC Employee Reviews for Manager

Advancement at RAC is only if your face fits, if you're pals with management. Your skills, contributions and abilities are not taken into account. Just looking across departments you can see areas of the business where incompetency is ignored and even promoted. Where it is discovered a new "unadvertised" role will suddenly be created and the problem shuffled away. Unrealistic expectations about work/life balance are also a problem, with little support or recognition for out of hours work. It's a 24 hour business but it's clear they don't want to pay for it. For some roles though the pay is above average, especially in call centre/customer service areas.

Pros

Friendly people, dynamic work environment, good rewards and benefits

Cons

Lack of progression, unrealistic expecations

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Productive and fun workplace

Interim Manager (Former Employee) - Birmingham - 8 March 2023

Productive working environment and I could see the suggestions coming in from the most amazing time having lunch with the most amazing and wonderful group of people

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Insights into RAC

Based on 81 survey responses

Areas for improvement

Sense of belonging
General feeling of work happiness
Trust in colleagues

Fantastic company

Manger (Current Employee) - Remote - 25 August 2022

Fantastic organisation to work for good pay and working environment, career opportunities. Every day is different you can manage your own time ensuring the job gets done

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Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short

Manager (Former Employee) - Bristol - 3 August 2019

Thomas Hobbes, born 1588, neatly sums up working at RAC: “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Which aptly describes the human nature and culture of this once blue chip organisation. Sadly no more, today, it is the epitome of modern day slavery. Dysfunctional doesn’t come close to describe the atmosphere and flip flop indecision of the leadership within the company. Empathy and emotional quotient are alien concepts to people managers who think the way to achieve better results is to belittle and berate their colleagues and patronise them with offers of pizza for going above and beyond. Misogyny, nepotism and narcissism will stand you in good stead to work here. It’s not all bad, the Bristol office has gained local recognition; unfortunately, by recruitment agencies and General Practices, for a rapid high turnover of staff and poor mental health respectively. When you go for interview they will spin you a good yarn, reality, however, is somewhat different. You will be expected to hit the ground running faster than Usain Bolt, with no support, induction or basic IT infrastructure like laptop or phone. Profit is king in this venture capitalist culture. Customer and colleague experience are not bothered about, you are just a number to be ignored. Management haven’t had an original idea in years they just keep going round in the same old loop doing the same thing expecting a miracle to happen this time around. It’s impossible to achieve anything of note as everyone is too busy pursuing their own agenda and change is blocked at every conceivable angle due to lack of resources -

Pros

Leaving in the evening

Cons

Arriving in the morning

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Terrible; just terrible.

Manager (Current Employee) - Bristol, Bristol - 28 January 2019

Are you looking for an opportunity to - challenge your mental wellbeing? - test your resilience? - have no life outside of work? - be over promised and under delivered? then this is the company for you. There is so much potential at this organisation but there is only one metric that matters and that is revenue - everything else is deprioritised. Really poor at embedding change mainly due to rushed and inadequate implementation; various initiatives will be launched to a big fanfare such as company values, but very quickly forgotten about. Great people rarely stay here and if you're looking for inspirational leadership this is not the place for you. Other than initial on-boarding (if you're lucky enough to even receive that), there is little if any learning and development that takes place. Colleagues 'disappear' regularly and this leads to a lack of security for people never knowing if they will be next. People are continuously protecting themselves; looking to point the finger of blame to move the spotlight to others and this is seen from the most senior of execs right through the organisation. Given the opportunity again, I would give this place a very wide berth.

Pros

Free Parking, Great Location, Good Canteen

Cons

Simply read the review

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Toxic workplace - avoid

Manager (Former Employee) - Bristol - 12 January 2019

Worst decision of my career to accept a role with the RAC. What you expect and what you get are poles apart. It is such a shame. There are some lovely people and thanks to them each day is (just about) bearable; but that’s not enough to balance out the infinite problems this company has. Massive staff turnover is a very clear indication that there’s something rotten at the core of this business. Work life balance - just take the ‘life’ part out of the equation. You get no life working at the RAC. There’s an expectation that you will work 24/7. On your deathbed? They’d expect you to ‘work from home’. Strategy - what strategy? This is a company that doesn’t know its bum from its elbow as far as a strategic planning is concerned. Goalposts are moved on a daily basis. Senior management want cheap quick-fixes rather than actually spending any time or resources dealing with the root causes of problems. Leadership - laughable. There’s no trust at the RAC. Blame culture and backstabbing is rife, mainly caused by people being under excessive pressure. Too scared of losing their jobs to own up to errors, people have a tendency to point fingers at everyone else. They don’t properly invest in the important things, like systems, health and safety, people development. They say they do to maintain the public facing image of a well-run business but all they’re really doing is putting sticking plasters over things. They keep talking about all these so called improvements they’re making but actions speak louder than words and the actions they actually take are a clear sign -

Pros

Free parking

Cons

60+ hour weeks standard, poor leadership, substandard systems, complete lack of direction

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Avoid this company unless you want a nervous breakdown.

Manager (Former Employee) - Bristol - 8 January 2019

This is the most badly run company I have ever worked for. The senior management style is poor generally with most having no idea how to deal with actual people. Many senior managers were not trained in how to manage and as a result had an aggressive and hard angle on pretty much everything. I wanted to work for RAC as I thought they were a great brand, but I soon realised it is a very hollow brand. The patrols are amazing, but the back office is run badly. They have no strategy, it changes every day, as do their priorities. They do not appreciate their staff and there are virtually no benefits. Work is stressful, deadlines are absolutely ridiculous and you're only as good as your last mistake. All they are interested in is making money for their american owners and yet when profits are made the staff don't see any of it. Don't let them fool you with words, this is NOT a superbrand, it's a super mess.