PLEASE READ AND SAVE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH FROM DECLINING IN THIS ABUSIVE ENVIRONMENT - Avis employé Employé (anonyme) BrightLocal

Dear colleague. Thank you for taking the time to speak up and share your experiences and concerns about working at BrightLocal. While your review is anonymous and I don’t know with certainty who wrote it, I will try to address your points with the knowledge I have of the situation. Obviously I am incredibly saddened and worried about the impact that your time at BrightLocal has had on you and your mental health. I hope that you are in a better place and being well supported in your new company, as well as personally. While your trust in us & me may not be very high, I would also like to say that we are here to support colleagues even after they leave and please do reach out to me directly if I can support you - I know you have my email. There is lots to address in your review, so I’ll try to that piece by piece now: 'Bullying managers' - this is a very serious issue and one that I am shocked to hear about. Bullying of any kind and severity is awful and we would never condone or intentionally overlook bullying behaviour at any level in the business. But I’m also not going to dispute that you felt bullied and the impact it had on you. So maybe my team and I have overlooked a situation or misunderstood the exact nature and severity of it. What I can promise is that now that we are aware - thanks to your review - we will look into this immediately to understand what exactly has occurred, how it happened, and what we can do to learn and improve from it so that we continue to make BrightLocal a great company to work for. I am particularly shocked by the notion that you think managers here would target an individual with an aim to force them out of the company. This would be awful if this is true, and we’re not that big a team for this type of behaviour to go unnoticed. So again, I promise that we will make this part of our investigation to understand if & how this might happen, and to ensure it doesn’t. 'HR not taking action' - I have spoken to our People team today to find out what feedback and indicators we have had from team surveys, exit surveys, and informal channels. We have not had any formal grievances raised against managers by ex-team members and no complaints or concerns raised through official channels. However I did learn that there were some informal conversations and feedback, and those team members were encouraged to raise their concerns more officiailly, but did not. This does makes it harder for us to identify and act on issues quickly and appropriately. But I also accept responsibility that you didn’t feel comfortable raising an official complaint while you worked here. ‘Speaking Up’ is one of our beliefs and we need to ensure that every team member feels safe and assured in doing this so that we hear about issues and can address them quickly and completely. That’s on me, that’s my failing; and I am very sorry. We will use this feedback to get better. Asking for 5 star reviews - we never ask or direct team members to leave us a 5 star review. We do ask team members to share their experiences of working here and I believe that all the reviews left are the genuine and honest reflections of the team members who wrote them. So I believe that we have earned many of these and they are not fake. Obviously your review is your experience and I/we do take this feedback very seriously and will use it to identify issues and how we can - and must - get better. We really pride ourselves on having a strong and positive culture where people feel appreciated, valued, and safe. We must protect and enhance this as we grow. So again I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention, but I am sorry that we were not able to address these issues while you worked here, and your mental health was badly impacted. I truly hope that you are in a better place now, being well supported, and things are improving for you. Please do contact me directly, or Zoe/Loran in the People team, if you would like to provide more feedback and give more details to help us understand your situation better. Thank you. Myles