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‘Traumatic and brutal’: ISG staff on contractor’s collapse

ISG administration — ISG filed for administration in September, making thousands of workers redundant (Image: Dreamstime.com)

Former ISG employees have criticised the contractor’s communications prior to its demise on 20 September.

One worker, who asked to remain anonymous, told CM that rumours only began to spread in ISG’s fit out business on Thursday 19 September.

“I told my director that we had to send a clear message to the team because they were getting scared and worried,” she said. “As a line manager and team leader I had to reassure them.”

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Fit out wasn’t among the companies included in the initial media coverage about ISG subsidiaries filing for administration.

“We believed fit out was still safe as it had been a very successful and profitable business,” the worker said. “We thought that maybe there was some restructuring happening but that there was a chance that we still had jobs by the end of the day.”

That evening, ISG’s chief executive Zoe Price sent an email to all staff across the group confirming the rumours in the trade press were “factually correct”.

“This was not the way I wanted you to find out and the news should not have leaked in this way,” Price said in her email. “We had a managed plan to tell you what was happening on Monday [23 September] once we had more clarity, but news has leaked at the filing stage – and that is why I am writing to you tonight.”

On Friday 20 September, Price held a town hall video call to inform staff across the eight arms of ISG’s UK business they had been made redundant with immediate effect and that EY had been appointed as administrators.

‘No projects, no work, nothing’

“That was it: no projects, no work, nothing,” the worker said. “It was quite traumatic and brutal.

“I think the problem is not so much that ISG went into administration or that the sale didn’t work out. It’s how it was communicated to us and how we found out about it.”

A member of staff who had been in the company for over three years posted a comment on CM saying that employees “had no idea” of the financial distress ISG was in.

“I loved working with our great team on site who worked hard for ISG,” she wrote in reaction to the collapse’s coverage. “We were all so unaware of this bomb coming at us.”

Another worker who also requested to remain anonymous told CM that the previous 12 months in their business unit within ISG Construction had been chaotic, with constant restructuring involving new staff being hired and others made redundant, as well as a freeze on resources.

“There were changes every six months to everything,” the employee said. “There was no settlement or single strategy; everything was all over the place.”