The truth about Unite Us - Anonymous employee Unite Us Employee Review

Perspective on Leadership: I want to start this section off by saying again that unite us is packed with lots of good humans. Most people stay because of those good humans and some of those good humans happen to be in leadership positions. Now as it relates to C-suite leadership, some of them are decent humans (while some are not) but unfortunately most don’t know what they are doing which is due to them being so new to this type of power (having never done this scale of work in any other company before). One example of them not knowing what they are doing is when they acquired 2 new companies the same year and then terminated a huge chunk of those new employees throughout the year (during layoffs) and/ or had a chunk of those employees leave due to how unorganized and toxic the environment was. This past year they’ve hired some new c-suite leaders to support the ones who don’t know what they are doing, which was a good move. As for the existing ones, Ive directly heard their C-suite leaders say “I hate the phrase ‘psychological safety’”. As for C-suite leadership within People Operations, one of them is interesting (to say the least). Simply put, she’s not a good leader. She has no people skills, no educational background to make her qualified to be overseeing an entire HR department within the company and unfortunately she’s in her position due to tenure/ white privilege. Her report underneath her is way more qualified to do her role the than she is herself, which says a lot (Iook at their LinkedIn profiles so you can see that I’m speaking on facts). Lack of integrity: Simply put, this company (from a business perspective) should not be fully trusted. While their intention to build care coordinated networks across the country is a phenomenal idea, platform utilization across most of their states is significantly low, which does not align with what is advertised or promoted as it relates to community impact. Additionally, some of their sales executives aren’t being very transparent with potential customers. They tell these customers that if they purchase the platform, they will gain access to a wide variety of resources and direct access to the non-profits in their community. Yes, those customers will gain access to a resource list but unfortunately those resources might be outdated because Unite Us doesn’t have a team who updates these resources regularly (they got rid most of those team members during layoffs and relocated those who stood to other departments). As far as customers having easy access to nonprofits, for most states this isn’t true being that most of the states have extremely low activity. I’m speaking on my direct experience of seeing leaders lie to potential customers just so they can secure contracts and then customer success managers are tossed with the burden of navigating a very angry customer who: A) can’t access the network of providers they were sold and B) can’t collect the data they were promised because no one is really using the platform. Diversity Equity & Inclusion: As I stated before, one thing I did love in this company is their commitment to education related to Diversity and Inclusion. Their DEI team (while small) is doing some powerful work. The problem is that systemically, majority of the diversity in the company is at the bottom tier of the company. For those thinking I’m lying, feel free to check out their unite us website (click the “team” tab). Not only are most of their team members of color on the bottom tier of the company, there’s limited opportunity to grow and develop in the company. It doesn’t help that there were massive layoffs this past year which further impact people of color being provided opportunities to climb the ladder. As for “equity”, this company is very sketchy with sharing salary related information (with the exception for states that legally require that information to be disclosed). Most of the salary bands span such a wild range, which leaves employees being unable to advocate for equitable pay (even when they know their white co-workers are being paid more). I’d also like to highlight that their most powerful leaders (CEO, President & CSO) rarely attend DEI related meetings which is a testament to the performative allyship that occurs at Unite Us. Lack of Growth: Something to note, is that this past year they removed their annual promotion cycle. Their Senior VP of People Operations reported that it was removed to give more space for managers to request promotions throughout the year. Many people in the company believe that the real reason they removed the annual promotion cycle was so that leadership could significantly minimize people getting promotions (due to the layoffs) and so that leadership doesn’t have to be held accountable for promotions at a certain point in the year. Additionally, the processes to have a team member be considered for a promotion is unorganized. Another issue within the company is that HRBPs are unsure how to navigate pay conversations (which is not the fault of the HRBPs). Workers go to their assigned HRBP needing guidance on how to climb the ladder but their HRBP can only do so much being that opportunities to climb the ladder are limited due to the ladder being broken. They’ve also been restructuring the company which has resulted in leaders moving team members into new teams/roles, not taking into account how this new role makes any sense to the employee’s career trajectory. It’s either “You either go to the new role or we’re firing you”. Lastly, they stopped approving “learning and development” funds to team members around May/June of 2022. Not sure if this is permanent but know people have been paying out off pocket for anything related to development across the company since than. Final thoughts: I’ve never felt so belittled, disrespected and unsafe in a company ever. Luckily I had good managers (who were good humans) who kept me sane but some of the company’s top leaders caused me high levels of anxiety, stress and trauma due to how they’ve approached many situations with me. These leader’s desire for power highlight their natural tendency to fall back on white supremest values, which is unfortunate because these tendencies are extremely harmful to their employees, especially their people of color. I’d also recommend looking at this company’s indeed reviews, which shows the company being rated at a 2.6 out of 5. Lastly, I’m sure following this post there will be 2 to 3 random reviews added to Glassdoor (praising the company) in an attempt to balance out my review. Now after sharing my experience, feel free to make a decision that’s best for you.