Former employees at a firm founded in Liverpool claim they worked 15-hour shifts, often without pay, and have described the company as “cult-like”.
Sales company Generation was founded in Liverpool and later based in Cardiff, but was said to have retained a "sister office” in Merseyside. A number of former employees have told our sister title WalesOnline about negative experiences working for the firm.
Scenes that unfolded each morning in Generation's office above a Cardiff Poundland have been likened to "something out of the Wolf of Wall Street", from claims of blaring dance music to intense swear-filled pep talks. The words "cult-like" and "dystopian" were frequently mentioned by former workers, who said their mental health suffered from their time at Generation.
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Martin Hayfield answered an advert for a permanent role based in Cardiff city centre with a salary of up to £25,000 and “performance bonus” for additional pay. Martin and others alleged that Generation did not mention in job adverts or interviews that they would be doing door-to-door sales or that shifts would last up to 15 hours.
According to former workers, it wasn't mentioned their pay would be zero if they did not make sales, or that they would have to pay for petrol and accommodation while travelling across the UK, sometimes sharing beds with colleagues in tiny Airbnbs. One 22-year-old woman was never paid at all despite more than a month of gruelling work that left her ill.
Generation's owner Roel Mojico has denied these allegations. Mr Mojico claims he "always strived to treat members of the Generation team — consultant or otherwise — kindly and compassionately".
He added: "Hearing that some feel that they did not receive such treatment is never nice, but typical in the demanding industry that is sales. On the other hand, I maintain that there are many I work/worked with that have been sales consultants for a long time and have thoroughly enjoyed doing so.”
Former workers said the doorstep sales sometimes involved energy deals. Workers were asked to memorise a script and tell people they were not selling energy and were "not from a supplier" but simply wanted to "stop your prices going up £200".
Even if the household was on a cheaper deal, a text would allegedly be sent saying money would be saved by switching to ScottishPower or So Energy. If a bill went up "we were told to say they wouldn't actually pay that amount", claimed one former worker.
Mr Mojico insists workers were never told to lie. He claims the deals really did save people money.
But ScottishPower told WalesOnline it has launched an investigation and "condemns the processes and practices highlighted", while So Energy says it does not "condone the practices mentioned". Both say they did not "directly" contract to Generation.
Regarding accusations of paying workers nothing if they went days without making sign-ups. Mr Mojico said the role was commission-only, yet employers are still bound by law to top up staff's pay when they don't make enough commission to earn the minimum wage.
But Mr Mojico claims Generation's workers were not actually staff — they were "self-employed contractors". Job adverts that said the opposite were simply an "oversight", he said. "Why would you apply to a sales company if you don't believe you can do sales?" he asked.
The entrepreneur, 28, has been running "marketing" companies since 2016. Despite growing up in Ascot and attending the elite public school Charterhouse — where fees are up to £44,000 a year — his LinkedIn page claims he "didn’t come from a background of abundance or success". In his Cardiff office he reportedly kept a toy cash cannon, emblazoned with the word "supreme".
When WalesOnline phoned a mobile number linked to Generation, a man purporting to be Mr Mojico defended the company's practices for eight minutes before asking them to call back in half an hour. When they did, he said he was "not actually Roel Mojico" but had "just wanted to hear what you had to say".
WalesOnline later received a call from the real Roel Mojico, who said one of his former "top sales guys" had "f****d up" by pretending to be him. Mr Mojico said the ex-"contractor" had been incorrect in saying Generation was still operating in Cardiff. The company no longer does door-to-door sales and "acts purely on a consultancy basis", he added.
The company had existed in multiple guises. When Mr Mojico lived in Liverpool it was called Generation Northwest, which changed in 2021 when he moved to Cardiff. The website for Generation South Wales is still dominated by an image of the Liverpool skyline.
After first getting her job., former employee Kate* was taken into the Generation office above Poundland on Windsor Place, Cardiff. The scene inside was far from what she had expected - she recalls music pounding from speakers as suited sales workers aimed mini basketballs through hoops.
She added: "Roel gathered everyone in a semi-circle for a big pep talk. He'd do these very repetitive Wolf of Wall Street-style speeches with a lot of cursing. If you were new, he'd do this strange thing where he'd really big you up in front of everyone, even though he'd barely talked to you."
Kate claims that at 22 she was among the oldest of around 30 workers, all of whom were standing up. Apart from Mr Mojico's own office, there were allegedly no seats, computers, phones or desks. Kate remembers thinking: "Oh my God, is this door to door?"
On Kate's first day none of the workers went door to door — allegedly because someone had complained to ScottishPower that Generation was "pressure-selling". The matter was discussed with much frustration on a Zoom call between Generation and around eight sister offices in cities across the UK, Kate claims. "That's how we were trained: to pressure-sell," she alleged.
Kate claims there was one week when 12 workers had to cram into a two-bedroom Airbnb. She allegedly had to share a bed with a female manager and each morning would wake to the sound of a motivational podcast.
Generation organised trips to sell door to door in low-income neighbourhoods in North West England. Kate said the company had "sister offices" in Manchester and Liverpool, complete with loud music and table tennis. "In Liverpool, we stayed in a big two-bedroom apartment that Roel said was his penthouse," she added.
Kate said she wasn't making any money but she had fallen into what felt like a "cult mentality". Managers would allegedly tell her: "You have to have a better mindset, you have to ignore the negatives to get to the positives."
Kate eventually quit the job. She claims that because she had taken two or three days off due to illness, she was denied any minimum pay guarantee — meaning she received nothing after more than a month of work. She believes a lingering "cult mentality" stopped her from complaining and made her blame herself.
When Mr Mojico was asked if he thought it was acceptable that Kate received no pay, he replied: "I agree that it is not acceptable and that is the reason why we respectfully asked her to leave. Our last conversation with [Kate] was to the effect of us suggesting that we part ways owing to her lack of sales and consequent lack of remuneration. In fact, she asked for more time with the company, which we refused. This is commonplace in the sales industry."
But Kate shared a message with us showing she told a manager: "I won't be coming back to the office. This job just isn't for me." She has since got a job as a legal assistant.
Mr Mojico said Generation has not actually been running in Cardiff since September. "We had some budgets there. We pretty much lost all those budgets because of low KPIs [key performance indicators]. So we moved out of Cardiff."
When asked about Martin's experience, the entrepreneur said: "We did mention to him, obviously, 'Hey man, it's all commission-based.'" WalesOnline put it to Mr Mojico that the law requires employers to guarantee the minimum wage even in commission-based roles. But he confirmed there was no pay without sign-ups, adding: "It's like being a self-employed plumber. If you don't do your job, if you don't do the work, then you don't get paid. Even if you went in that morning, if you didn't check anything or survey anything, then you wouldn't get paid for it. We made that pretty clear, though."
Regarding job adverts encouraging people to apply for "permanent" roles with a base salary, Mr Mojico said: "If there are examples of that, then obviously I would feed it back to the recruitment team." He also said Generation would have given Martin his self-employed contractor "paperwork" after his "observation day".
Asked if he had exploited people, he said: "I was also one of those self-employed contractors before I even had the responsibility of running one of these teams. I appreciate everyone's point of view but we always say to people, 'Hey, look, you don't get paid daily'... Why would you apply to a sales company if you don't believe you can do sales?"
Mr Mojico said he started Generation in Liverpool around 2020 before moving to Cardiff the following year. "We just had pre-allocated marketing budgets in that area. As soon as the budgets drained, then we would go into another operation, or we'd go into another market. We have always just been dictated towards who had the biggest budget."
Asked if Generation ever had a network of offices across the UK, he said he only ran one operation at a time and there was only one Generation office at a time. WalesOnline later discovered an old Generation South Wales press release that included the line: "Generation and their sister offices across Wales, Liverpool and Manchester are off to the Instagrammable spot that is Bansko in Bulgaria on a team skiing trip".
About Kate's visits to northern offices and the Zoom call between eight UK offices, Mr Mojico replied: "The offices you refer to are not, and were not, run by Generation." He has not responded to a question seeking clarity on Generation's links to other companies.
Mr Mojico did respond to the complaints of false advertising. He emailed: "All on-boarders that worked for Generation were given a set of points to cover during the on-boarding process. This included drawing specific attention to the fact that most of our contractors worked on a commission-only basis, as is common within the sales industry. The adverts you refer to are the result of an oversight made by recruitment consultants, an oversight we later ensured was corrected."
He also rejected the description of "dystopian" pitch scripts. "All standardised scripting was in line with the good work the clients we represented were undertaking," he said. "Scripts such as these are one of a number of steps that were put in place to ensure accurate information was delivered at all times. The scripts are clearly meant to allow salespeople to convey personality."
Mr Mojico said: "I am well aware that I was fortunate enough to be sent to great school in an affluent area but this does not have anything to do with the people I work with. I am proud that through my company I have been able to offer opportunities to a range of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Whilst you seek to portray the commission structure as exploitative, we had numerous members of the team who stayed for a long time because they welcomed the opportunity to maximise their earning potential and enjoyed the Generation environment and culture."
He added that Generation "no longer engages salespeople to sell for clients on its behalf". The company now acts "purely on a consultancy basis".
A ScottishPower spokesperson said: “ScottishPower do not and have not contracted directly with Generation South Wales. ScottishPower stopped this type of sales lead generation activity in March 2022; however, we are actively investigating any role Generation South Wales potentially had in this. We condemn the processes and practices highlighted, which bear no resemblance to the standards we expect from anyone working on behalf of ScottishPower.”
And So Energy said: "We have not received a direct complaint on this specific issue. So Energy is not directly contracted with the business or person in question, and [we] do not condone the practices mentioned."
HMRC has the power to take enforcement action against employers that fail to pay the minimum wage. When we asked if it would act on the concerns over Generation, a spokesperson for the UK Government said: “Where an individual is working on a genuinely self-employed basis they are not eligible for the minimum wage. The Government is clear that employers cannot simply opt out of paying the national living wage or national minimum wage by defining staff as self-employed. An individual’s entitlement to the minimum wage depends on their employment status. Individuals cannot opt out of the rights they are owed. We cannot comment on individual job contracts.”
*Not real name.
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