Employees are routinely commanded via terse group emails and scary office 1-on-1's to forge labor descriptions and log a minimum of 40 hours a week against client retainers regardless of what or how much work has been done.
That's right. Work here if you aren't troubled by stealing from clients. Some employees refused, at their own peril. They were sent packing.
Larger clients are positioned as targets for particularly high overbilling because, as it was put, "They expect it and barely pay attention." Another gem was "Just make it up! If you don't use up the budget they won't think the work is worth anything."
Leadership blows through each project and each day without knowing/sharing what they want, where they're going, or taking time to sync with their creatives. They simply don't have the creative fluency needed to share and cultivate ideas with others. This is painfully apparent whenever staff shares ideas and work. Business leadership makes embarrassingly tone-deaf and uninformed comments, and creative direction often dumps on contributors without sincere attempts to understand an approach. None of this is to say that leadership isn't intelligent, rather that they aren't trained and don't know how to treat staff as thinking, feeling people.
There is a good cop/bad cop thing going on with leadership. Eventually, you understand there is no good cop. They're a coordinated effort.
Fear and paranoia are used as the primary motivators.
Office 1-on1s and 2 on 1's are aggressive, intimidating, insincere, and manipulative. Employees are lied to, they will flip a switch and go from a kind smile to a barrage of lies intended to rip you apart. Employees are pitted against each other.
It has been the subject of conversation among nearly all employees that staff is treated destructively: First, they tear down and dismantle each employee on a rotating basis, trying to convince them they are inadequate, that they are invalid and lack skill and talent, and then that they are overpaid. (They are not.) Then they are told nobody else would be willing to employ them. It's an elderly way of avoiding churn, but they can't seem to help it, it's reflexive.
As a result, staff come and go constantly. Only 2-3 non-senior staff have been at the company for more than 3 years, that should tell you something.
Rivers Agency is attractive from the outside and by design seems to be an artistic, creative force. Be warned: It's bait.
Inside, it's a living nightmare.
