Terrible company to work for - Research Technician ICMS Employee Review

Thank you for your comments. We appreciate receiving both positive and negative feedback. The Research Technician positions at ICMS are filled with candidates that may be still in University/College, or recently graduated and just starting their careers. Although candidates gain vast agronomy experience and enjoy the role, many are hired in a full-time term position and decide that applied field research does not line up with the career. As such, the retention rate can be low in this position, giving the impression that this is caused by the employee’s reaction to the company vs the employee searching for a career choice to their liking. ICMS has many fulltime permanent staff which have worked for the company in excess of 5, 10, 15 and 20-year terms. This employee was on a team in which the managing Research Agronomist was relatively new to the position of managing and supervising direct reports. As such, the Research Agronomist was still experiencing a steep learning curve regarding supervision and time management. This did result in some conflict on the team. The Regional Manager recognized this was occurring, and ICMS was provided supervision training internally and externally (Dale Carnegie course) to help the employee develop their supervision and human relations skills. We recognise that every employee has a different equipment operation experience level, especially when it comes to equipment which may be perceived as older. We have focused more resources to employee training regarding the operation and maintenance of our equipment. As a result, operator knowledge has increased, and equipment downtime has decreased resulting in increased productivity. The B.C Labour Act states that “At least semi-monthly and within 8 days after the end of the pay period, an employer must pay to an employee all wages earned by the employee in a pay period”. ICMS has two pay periods per month as required by the B.C. Labour Act. If the end of the pay period lands on a weekend, as a privilege to the employees, ICMS will often make an advanced payroll deposit on the preceding Friday. However, there are instances where payroll is deposited on the weekend, which may lead to the confusion that ICMS “don’t pay employees on time”. The act also states that employers have up to 8 days after the end of the pay period to make the payroll deposit. ICMS recognizes that the Administration department experiences difficulty with issuing paystubs to employees. It is working on a solution to rectify this problem.