BrewDog CEO James Watt has responded to claims of a “toxic” workplace culture that made former employees feel burnt out, afraid an miserable”.

In an open letter to the chief executive 61 former members of staff and 45 who did not wish to be named claimed a “significant number” of former workers a “suffered mental illness as a result of working at BrewDog”.

The self-proclaimed ‘Punks With Purpose’ said: “It doesn’t matter which part of the business we worked in; production, bartending, sales, operations, packaging, quality, marketing or HR, we all felt that in our day to day working lives, there were at best hurdles, and at worst genuine safety concerns.”

They added: "You spent years claiming you wanted to be the best employer in the world, presumably to help you to recruit top talent, but ask former staff what they think of those claims, and you'll most likely be laughed at.

"Being treated like a human being was sadly not always a given for those working at BrewDog."

Brewdog often build marketing strategies around their big corporate social responsibility campaigns and even offered many of its venues across the UK as part of the mass vaccination rollout in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, CEO James Watt has taken to social media to address the concerns raised by previous employees.

In a statement to his 98,000 followers he said the comments were “hard to hear” and that vowed to “listen, learn and act” upon what he had read.

The statement read: “At BrewDog we are focused on building the best business we can, which is why the open letter we saw on Twitter was so upsetting, but so important. Our focus now is not on contradicting or contesting the details of that letter, but to listen, learn and act.

“As a fast-growing business, we have always tried to do the best by our team – we do have thousands of employees with positive stories to tell as a result.

“But the tweet we saw last night proves that on many occasions we haven’t got it right.

“We are committed to doing better, not just as a reaction to this, but always; and we are going to reach out to our entire team past and present to learn more. But most of all, right now, we are sorry.”

He added: “It’s hard to hear those comments, but it must have been harder to say them. We appreciate that and we will endeavour to honour that effort and courage with the real change it deserves. We aren’t going to make excuses, we’re going to take action.

“From our commitment to sustainability to our passion for beer, BrewDog has always been defined by taking responsibility and continually improving. This is no exception.”