Pros
t that is very relaxed and upbeat Team meetings full of laughter and good-natured camaraderie; weekly ‘Fun Friday’ with team building games (that are fun games, not boring ones); Casual dress code Free snacks and drinks in break room Okay pay It is what it is for debt collection and sales; Engaged Owners In office daily with open door policies and literal open doors; Takes Covid-19 seriously and coaches when employees violate mask/sickness policy Position means nothing - any employee can call out another for not wearing their masks Employees sent home on the spot if reporting any sick symptoms; Monthly bonus program and occasional additional bonus programs/contests Not amazing but okay additions to paychecks monthly In addition, the company truly does care about its customers. Unlike many financial services, the company has policies in place that help debtors who are struggling financially and are not set in stone with their payment dates and things. As long as a customer is honest and upfront with what is happening in their lives, FSF does their best to work with debtors on paying back their debt. There aren’t many debt collection services that will do that.
Cons
With all of that said, there are a number of cons for working at this company: Inconsistent training and standards Number of instances where trained one way to perform job functions, and then coached shortly after when method changed and team was not notified, only updated in an online dashboard; Chaotic, informal training program No checklists, repeated requests for best practices materials or scripts not met or told didn’t exist, to then be coached later that some things need to be verbatim (yet there were no scripts to follow? - did eventually put scripts into play but also told not verbatim and then told they were); Poor/inconsistent communication regarding information critical to performing daily job Number of instances where management was working on system issues behind the scenes, did not notify employees, and customers began calling about the issues - when brought up, only told “We’re working on that right now,” but information should have been relayed ahead of time as a heads up to expect issues if known by management; Poor training about systems and technologies available Brief overview of antiquated CRM system but half of items in system uncovered, leaving employee to have to explore system for self and ask multiple follow up questions as to if/when/how to use functionality; Zero training on de-escalation techniques (best practices) or methods used to collect on accounts Repeated requests for additional training or best practices review unfulfilled When following up on requests for additional team or individual training, immediate supervisor actually said, “I don’t want to hear any more about the damn…;” Zero job growth While the FSF team is growing, moving out of entry-level positions is next to unheard of, and promises of growth opportunities within six months of hire never panned out or positions were eliminated entirely; Antiquated technologies for customer service applications Frankly, their CRM system is a joke, bugs in the system are never fixed, and the company that owns the CRM doesn’t even seem to understand how their own technology works; Chaotic changes to work procedure and requirements Employees are given no warning when management chooses to change work procedure and those changes often contradict one another only days or weeks apart; Poor to nonexistent work performance reviews 90 Day Review never given; one-on-one training is not differentiated from performance coaching; performance coaching is all verbal, nothing ever written, and does not have a set procedure (such as, 1 warning, 2 warning, and next will be final warning, etc), just seems to be final warning; No HR for handling escalated matters outside of immediate supervisor and director There is no HR at this company at all (the payroll accountant seems to handle processing all HR forms, such as insurance, etc, but they can’t walk anyone through their benefits); Several instances of unprofessional behavior, including management cussing at employees for training requests went unmet when escalated to Director and no HR department to follow up with; Subpar benefits Insurance is a joke (company is working to expand/better, but all of the options presented to date were astronomically expensive)
