Brewdog ‘sorry’ and vows action as ex-workers claim poisonous culture | Enterprise News
2 min readBrewdog co-founder James Watt has apologised and vowed to “pay attention, understand and act” after a team of ex-personnel joined jointly to allege a culture of anxiety at the company.
The group, contacting alone Punks with Objective, placed an open up letter on Twitter in which they explained the craft beer specialist’s ambiance, since its inception in 2007, as being built all-around a “lifestyle of character”.
It accused the business enterprise of currently being publicity hungry and telling “lies” to push awareness amid the Punk IPA producer’s immediate enlargement from brewer to bar possession.
Martin Dickie (l) and James Watt launched the corporation in 2007. Pic: AP
The 61 signatories reported: “Even worse, by inserting personalities at the centre of your messaging, you have inflated egos and fostered a society inside craft beer that deifies founders, and presents body weight to sexist and misogynistic brewers who declare to be standing up for totally free speech.
“You have grow to be a lightning rod for some of the worst attitudes existing on each the internet, and in serious lifestyle.”
The letter explained a “important” number of employees struggling mental sickness as a outcome of their encounters and pointed to bad treatment by some others even further down the chain of command and a concern of talking out.
It laid obligation for the “rotten culture” at the feet of Mr Watt and urged recent personnel to force back again against it.
It mentioned: “The only rationale BrewDog has come to be what it is, is that below immense force, great people today have performed poor factors to achieve the task set just before them, in these a way that advantages only the enterprise.
“Staying explained to to disregard overall health and protection rules? Really don’t. Someone’s demanding you send beer to an function in the United states of america by bypassing customs? Nope.”
Mr Watt put a individual reply to the open up letter on his possess Twitter account to say “we are sorry”.
He wrote: “We are focussed on constructing the greatest business we can, which is why the open up letter we saw on Twitter was so upsetting, but so critical.
“Our emphasis now is not on contradicting or contesting the facts of that letter but to hear, master and act.”
Nonetheless, the Punks with Reason group later claimed that existing staff members experienced been urged, through an e mail, to signal a counter letter.
Asked to remark on that issue, Brewdog indicated to Sky News that it had no further assertion beyond what Mr Watt had now explained.
