Revolut creates team to address corporate culture

In a move first reported by the Guardian, the $33 billion company, which has around 6000 staff around the world, will unveil its new ‘CultureLab’ team on Friday.

Revolut has long had a reputation for a toxic workplace environment, with some former staff claiming they were set unachievable targets in the name of the startup’s growth, forced to do unpaid work and put under severe pressure to the point where they eventually quit their jobs. The culture section of its website currently boasts, among other things, that “the bar is very high, and we evaluate people accurately, not kindly”.

However, it now plans on “upgrading” this culture and introducing new “values-based behaviours” with the CultureLab team, which will include an applied behavioural scientist and pyschologist.

Revolut insists that the move is not directly linked to its efforts to secure a UK banking license.

“I wouldn’t say this is a straight reaction from regulatory discussions…This is more linked to our growth and how we’re changing and the feedback we were getting from our people. We really needed to shift and change,” head of people experience, Hannah Francis, told the Guardian.

Adds Francis: “We did get some comments that potentially it seemed a little bit more aggressive, but in the fast-paced, hyper-growth that was Revolut however many years ago. We have really moved on since then.”