Assistance Services Group Reviews

Low pay (several people need multiple jobs to cover cost of living). There are never raises. They have a cap on wages so people that were there for 20 years are only making 18.90/hr. If you bring up an issue you get told "Don't be negative" even when you're literally telling them something like 'The computer breaks down daily can you have someone fix that?" or "Am I ever going to get to take vacation? They keep cancelling my approved days off". They say something is negative so they can pretend it's OUR fault when it's THEIRS. **And older employee found out that after 20 yrs with the company they took away her benefits because apparently that's the package the company went with. When she had cancer she burned through her savings to cover treatments & to get a special bra after her partial mastectomy. Many of us had to do a Go Fund Me for it. The company gave her NOTHING. No gift cards to help with groceries while she had to take time off to recover, NOTHING. **Also, there is NO pension there. **There's NO seniority. Employees working 20 years there are treated the same as employees working 3 months there. ***Vacation is constantly messed with. A friend that still works there had booked vacation and only had 6 days left so she tried to get a week off. She booked all six days off. Scheduling then decided that ONE day off, smack in the middle of the week, they'd book her to work. She had days on either side off & weekends so it was like she had 9 days off but right in the middle she would have to go to work. And since they didn't get back to her when she was waiting for the schedule to be released, she booked her vacation out of country. But then they wanted her to still come in for that one day. She tried to switch, asking if she could come in at the beginning or end of the week instead, they said no. She then spent several weeks with management & HR before it was resolved . A couple other friends that worked there weren't so lucky. Just booking off a few days is a nightmare for them. They're smart and book all vacation for the entire year, in December, it gets approved, then when the schedule comes out (4 wks in advance0 they find their vacation gone and are just told 'they can do that'. So in trying to have a 2 days off during the week like normal & booking 2 vacation days that would NORMALLY mean you have 4 days off right? Well no, they took away vacation days then put back so they can use them later in the year....and you get those (former vacation days) as regular unpaid days off. ie) booking the Thursday & friday off she hoped for weekend off with it - ended up just getting thursday & Friday then had to work the weekend. THEN it happened to them 5 more times last year. Then it gets to December when they're not allowed to book any time off at Christmas so they have 4 days banked they cannot use now...so they'll get paid out. They got paid at the of February! It took that long. ****Computers literally have daily glitches that never get fixed. there are work around for the work arounds. management is always about numbers. Time between call for one club is only allowed at 2 seconds! That's not enough to take a sip of water or take a breath. ...so when the system becomes slow you're in after call work for about 20 seconds until it works again. Then you're lectured about your after call work time being 'so high' at (an average) of 5 seconds. One of the other programs it's worse because their ridiculous goal is really low and with the new program they have to use there are very long delays. My friend said she was told to have 40 seconds after call work for it but while she's waiting for the chart to process it can take 3 minutes or longer. management knows about the issue but they still lecture people and cat like they're exaggerating. **If you're really upset about something there, management (in each department I was in) just say "don't like it then quit". I brought up a concern I had with how upset I was after a suicide caller, the woman was screaming and crying & I literally could do nothing but sit there and wait while the professionals (nurses) come on the line. It took about eight minutes as we were extremely busy. So I was getting flashbacks to my mom's episodes and I told my boss but they blew up at me and just told me I could just quit. ***One of my friends was recently having a conversation with her friend on their breaks on the floor. Simple stuff, nothing bad about anyone, but this coworker reported then and made up this ridiculous story & claimed he was so upset by it he had to leave (he often left for small things like a cut to the finger etc) So each of the ladies were called in one at a time to defend themselves. Each told the same story and even their boss knew they were telling the truth. But that employee who was telling stories seemed to get away with everything & wasn't until about 8 months later he was fired. Point is, they reward bad behaviour there. The two ladies are always really hard working, give their feedback when asked, they help people when confused, they've even helped one of the injured workers walk to and from the bathroom when she needed help. Yet they were treated like criminals. One say she was in tears, worried her job was at stake, the other one said the whole thing made her very upset for about a month after. ***Nurses/management are committing fraud. To be clear, it's not the nurses' fault. They are given specific directives which they have to follow - if not they can be fired. It's management that tells them what those directives are. With having hundreds of people calling all the time there is a queue that starts to build up. Lots of people needing advice to speak to a nurse, some with minor issues and some that are extreme. Us reps put create the chart, put it in along with the symptom. Prioritizing anything really important. Everyone else has to wait according the highest wait time. Often when we see it's over a 2-3 hour wait, we'll see charts from the middle & the bottom of the queue disappear. We got callers complaining about how they were quoted a 3 hour wait time then they get a call 20 minutes later (for a non priority like having a sore hand). The problem is they figured they could go grocery shopping or have dinner. They realize they miss all 3 attempts so that means they have to call back and put another request in for a callback. They're irate and we have to deal with it, listening to them scream asking us why the nurses called them so early etc and no answer we give is good so they just get angry and it's incredibly stressful. Then you have those people that actually have been waiting 3 hours but they're not called (because the lower wait time people are being called first) and eventually it climbs up and up so they're waiting 3.5hrs...4hrs...4.5hrs... The trend with that is the calls all under that 1 hr mark are being called - because they have to report to the ministry of health anything above 1 hr. So if they leave a handful of callers waiting 4-5hrs it doesn't matter to management as MOST callers will be contacted before that....making the numbers look good. Plus, if a person misses 3 attempts and have to put another callback request in that means it's more calls for the nurse which means...more money for the company. It's fraud. Yep FRAUD....you know...illegal? I expressed concerns before about it and immediate management just thought I was being overly dramatic. Their boss just smiled and acted like she had no idea. ***Meetings are lip service only. We had many meetings for about a year or so and every time we brought up crucial issues. One we talked about how some callers are being obscene over the phone...repeeatedly calling back and harassing the women. Management said it wasn't harassment at all and we still had to talk to them, spending several minutes creating the charts for the callbacks while the perverts do gross things (which we can hear) over the phone. Their boss said to just hang up but when we put that into practice we get lectured and made to feel stupid. So it's essentially putting up with harassment. It's not right. Also during the meetings they wanted us to come up with ways they can have incentives that are NOT monetary. This is after many of us expressed concern how it's nearly impossible to pay our bills as it is. The few ideas we came up with they shot down saying it wasn't possible. Then we got emails later implying that because we didn't come up with anything then we won't be getting an incentive. once again trying to blame us. ***The health & safety at the company is a joke. They do have a health & safety team but it's often difficult to get a hold of them because we're required to go through our team leaders first. My friend had been in the washroom, just got out of the stall and the door fell off, hit her in the back of the head and she landed on her face! She ended up in the hospital a couple days later with a severe migraine & mild concussion. After almost 2 weeks of management not addressing it, my friend contacted Health & safety directly who then investigated. Yet, there was no disciplinary action at all. It was just them making sure my friend was okay. That's it. Nothing else happened with it. Ever. They didn't even compensate her for the fact she had to take a couple days off from work. They didn't even pay for that time! ***There are zero paid sick days. a couple people had pneumonia & had to take a week off. All without pay then they got lectured about taking so much time off work! One got a 'memo' which is a written warning even though they say 'it's not a warning' it literally says they took too much time they make them sign something that says "I will not take anymore time off in the next two months" ...it's super sketchy. Then you have people who are so scared after that if they get the flu they come in, feel horrible then end up spending their breaks puking in the washroom. One lady was pregnant & they harassed her about the fact she kept having to go pee (even though she literally had a doctor's note about it)....but her ginormous belly & the sonograms still didn't convince them it was good enough reason for her to pee a few times throughout the day. They claimed her breaks should have been enough. ***Good team leaders are squashed. One team leader there in London is amazing and he tries to help people but upper management doesn't listen to him. Then they got rid of a couple positions and he his job as upper team leader was taken away so he was essentially demoted...and no one listens to him again. So now he has to do the same work as the other team leaders (who mostly are terrible). One of the team leaders in North Bay is great as he genuinely tries but he ends up doing all the work of the other TL there. The good people do 2-3 times the amount of work while the other ones do nothing. ***When it's crazy busy of non stop calls & having to deal with major headaches, one thing after the other..back to back back to back calls....we hear one of the team leaders on her phone - having a personal call that goes on for over an hour. She's laughing & joking, then later she gets annoyed when someone will actually tell her why they're upset (with her or the calls, it didn't matter). It really made me feel like dirt to see that she didn't care at all that we're doing a great job trying to help people and we're treated like...dirt. Upper management isn't any better. I brought a couple concerns to them during meetings and just play stupid. Some even say 'well it's a call centre'. Yeah well 90% of the job isn't regular call centre work. Creating medical charts for nurses...or medical charts for the at home care...I've been told the proper term is "intake specialist" at a a place like CCAC and one would get paid $22 an hour for that. At sykes you get to do several programs simultaneously with a (Cap wage) at $18.90. But for those of us that were only there a couple years we were only getting paid about $16/hr ***Call volume is anywhere from 70-125 calls (for telehealth) or for some overnighters taking FCA it's about 350 calls a night. If one takes HCC calls those can go on for 10-30 mins (Unless you have an entire family signing up) So the along with a few other programs all come in at the same time and with very little staff. Management then proceeds to constantly talk about service level and how it's not good enough . That's NOT our fault but they go on about how WE need to be faster & get the person off the phone as quick as possible. But then if you ask they say 'but listen to them, help them...take your time" then again push you to be as fast as possible. It's lip service just so they can claim they were telling us to take our time - so they can pretend like they care about our stress levels which they don't. ***Schedule is a nightmare. a few of my friends can't start at 6am so they can't be on the flex schedule. that means they have to pick permanent evenings - which literally has no schedule. They have a start time but they could work 5 days a week or 6 or 7...have 1 day off, work another 6 then have 2 days off. It changes constantly so they can't plan ahead. There is literally no reason for this. Team leaders don't know why, schedulers just respond shortly saying - and I quote my email I got last year "we can do whatever we want". They do NOT care about any of their employees.