Or Media: Beware.

A company all freelancers would be wise to avoid: Or Media, based in Procter Street, London.

Saudi owned, not that you would know that by looking at their website (they keep that well under wraps unsurprisingly), their poor reputation has been earned over many months of their dreadful treatment of freelancers.

Failure to pay holiday entitlement and pension contributions (to those who are entitled to it) are two such ills but far and away the biggest issue with this lot is their total inability to pay an invoice on time and in full.

Innumerable freelancers have been in contact about this, with some waiting for over a year to get the money they should have been paid. To add to the iniquity, when they do eventually get paid, obtaining (the legally entitled) interest and late fees owed becomes a further massive struggle.

The company (Director: Adel Al Abdulkarim) also owns Azimuth Post Production) and is one of those which likes to think that freelancers should really care about the company’s own financial problems, responding to one longstanding debtor that:

“We are expecting funds from a client which are unfortunately being held up due to their financial year end commitments…your continued support and patience is much appreciated”.

Needless to say support and patience wears very thin indeed when actual pounds and pence are non-forthcoming, which is all too often.

According to its website the company “stands as a reliable force committed to reshaping perceptions and perspectives”. Well no, not reliable in any way when it comes to honouring its commitments. And their appalling reputation has also been well-flagged on Glassdoor too, with its workers keen to put in the boot.

A sample:

They don’t pay their contracted staff.

No respect for staff or contractors.

Poor treatment of staff, bad employee management, an utterly useless HR department.

Unstable, unsupportive management. No direction.

Terrible HR, terrible organisation, leaving staff feeling completely exploited, promised things that never materialised.

Toxic work culture.

Very unstable recently.

Quite a dodgy company. Doesn't pay on time and stopped paying salary altogether.

Late pay.

Pay stopped altogether so very stressful.

Management very poor. Frequently faililng to communicate important messages regarding pay, and even the future of the programs (whether we'd lose our jobs or not!) to staff. Laying people off without notice and for no reason!

Management pressure on senior producers and producer directors shifts the brief and pressures them to sacrifice staff, rather than face up and manage things properly.

Chaotic environment.

Tyrannical management. Complete disregard for employees as, you know, actual human beings? You'll be working on the same film until you go to your grave, will anyone see it? Probably not...

Advice to Management: Disband the company.

Everything is bad in this place.

And these two humdingers:

Where to start there is so much wrong it would be easier to say avoid at all costs but for further insight here is why you should avoid. I had heard that OR media had a bad reputation but was not prepared for how bad it actually was. I have never worked somewhere with such a lack of respect for its employees. Months of hard work diminished and throw away on a whim. No respect of experience they have hired, you are literally treated Iike the hired help. Regularly kept waiting for meetings by senior management who never turn up. But expect you to wait anyway. When i say regularly i mean week after week multiple meetings a week. Saw previous HOP who was attempting to bring in change thrown out with no justification, replacement who lasted about a month. Current production management no clear leadership, too scared to voice opinions in case fired. No structure, procedures, overworked etc. Producers work not respected, senior staff more concerned with keeping jobs than respecting the teams and the work and experience they bring to the table. Saw whole productions dropped again on whim of owner after significant work which causes those working on shows to feel demoralized and in some cases they had pulled in significant favors to get materials or brought other people onto projects, they then look like idiots to these peers. This company has big ideas but unable to get anything out the door, if you work here you could likely never see your work broadcast anywhere. In the time i worked here i never saw a finished show delivered even with the large team that had been built. Should it take 2+ years to make a single hour of TV, which is traditional documentary, elsewhere i have done this in less that’s 9 months For a company which is only making shows based in the Middle East it is strange that you will not hire anyone from the Middle East, anyone who has previously worked in Saudi or has a heritage from the region. Also major lack of diversity in the team. I have never worked anywhere that takes a degree qualification from Cambridge or Oxford over real industry experience before. I witnessed people with no experience whatsoever hired over people with a decade of experience because of where they obtained their degree. This type of biased hiring left the rest of the industry 20 years ago.

Upon first appearances - OR seemed to be a high-end documentary production company with some decent productions under its belt. I joined OR in a project that had been going for some time, with the promise that the production had now changed direction somewhat but had a clear path to completion. It quickly became apparent to me that the series we were trying to make had no clear progression path in sight, and we were strung along for months on end. It soon became clear that this is a company led by someone who is constantly churning out ideas, and then scrambling together a team to see this idea come to fruition. He then moves on to another idea, and that original team is either asked to change their production so drastically or abandon the original idea completely (often with weeks or months of work already under their belts which amounts to nothing). In normal circumstances, (certainly every other place I've worked), every production has a clear schedule. I didn't see one version of a schedule in over a year of working at OR. Goalposts changed constantly, communication from the top was extremely poor, and morale was driven into the ground. All the while, the pace and intensity of work was kept high, with regular hours of overtime and expectations to drop everything outside of working hours to complete complex tasks. I don't mind working outside hours when it is necessary and the schedule is up against it - that is part of working in TV. But sacrificing my personal life for a production that essentially didn't exist was an immense toll. Contracts were vague, and at one point during renewal I worked weeks without seeing a new contract issued. This is unacceptable. Many of my peers were having to quibble over payment - not seeing the salary they either deserved or had been promised, all while being asked to dedicate huge amounts of time to an employer that didn't show them the same loyalty. Disgruntled colleagues were leaving weekly. I'd strongly advise avoiding OR Media. I will never work there again, and I know that all my former colleagues echo that sentiment. The company is very quickly gaining a bad reputation in the industry, and with good reason.

All in all then: Or Media, freelancers be very wary!