Pros
- Company does have, in theory, an excellent employee appreciation strategy - Company hires and promotes from within, and there are always opportunities - Independent workdays - Willing to hear and/or let any one from any level suggest and experiment with approaches - The CEO and other leaders in the company are accessible and approachable by employees of any level - in theory and about 80% of the time in practical application
Cons
- Company is growing faster than it's foundation can handle - quantity of services, not quality of services - Scheduling - This is one that could be spoken about at any company, indefinitely. Here are my personal concerns: --Requests for time off, no matter how far in advance are employees' responsibility to cover. This is a problem to me for a couple reasons: 1. It speaks to a lack of understanding of some of the bare bones of scheduling - if good communication, a cogent process and uniform understanding of scheduling by supervisora and team work is present - it should not be a problem for supervisors to work together to create schedules and share employees between houses to accommodate employees who give notice. 2. Employees, especially at sites that only have 1 staff on at a time, do not interact, they do not build any sort of comradeship; they really don't even know each other exsist. As a result, employees do not help each other readily. Its every man for himself, and there's a "get to give" mentality. This shows in scheduling, but also throughout other aspects of the company. 3. Notice of an absence is always best practice - there needs to be *something* in place to encourage and reinforce it. 4. Using Facebook Groups as the primary source of shift coverage is ineffective and frustrating. It is too easy for employees to see how many of their colleagues are looking at their request for help, and not responding. That builds animosity. Facebook is too casual. Employees do not seem to feel as obligated to work a shift they picked up as an after-thought while surfing Facebook. It doesn't seem official - so they show up or not, depending on how they feel that day - if they even remember they picked it up. - Disputes are not addressed in a timely, assertive or resolution-based fashion. If an employee is struggling with another employee, my personal belief is a supervisor immediately needs to encourage being assertive and self-assessing and if needed, conduct a moderated, resolution-based conversation between the two employees. A supervisor should never allow gossiping, feuding, complaining, etc. to go on without making it a priority to identify and attempt to recitify the situation. Employee dissatisfaction in all its incarnations is an insidious barrier to quality service provision.