I would like to begin this review by stating this is the second time I am submitting this because the leadership at Instant Teams is attempting to silence former employees for leaving honest reviews. This is the reality for former employees of the company, who are being silenced by the C-Suite. Many of the positive reviews you see on this platform are requests by the company for current employees to write and hide the negative reviews. During my time at Instant Teams I first hand, witnessed manipulation, unethical conduct, and a hostile work environment. Like other fellow military spouses, I was drawn to Instant Teams by positive word-of-mouth promotion by a friend. I was expecting to be employed by a company that essentially acted as a safe harbor for military spouses and a community that understood the lifestyle. While that is true in some aspects. Instant Teams is no longer a company that employs a majority of military spouses and is no longer, majority owned by military spouses due to the large ownership stake of their investors. The company puts a strong emphasis on the founders because they are "military spouses" and "female entrepreneurs." This is truly what I loved about Instant Teams in the beginning. I believe the intent from the founders was pure in intentionally wanting to promote military spouse employment but within the last year and a half they have steered away from the main goal of the company. I have never seen an emphasis on a companies c-suite the way Instant Teams does. To piggy-back on a previous review about the company making their social look great but is a public mask of the true identity of the company. A quick look at the companies social media pages will show the CEO, Liza Rodewald, more than anyone else within the company. A closer look at the website and the social pages makes the main focus of the company the founders and not the military spouses employed at Instant Teams that have dedicated their lives to the promotion of military spouse employment. The few "employee highlights" they publish are re-shares or new posts that truly do not do the hard-working employee justice. The retention rate is horrendous. There is no job security with Instant Teams. During my time at Instant Teams I witnessed full teams terminated including the help desk, sales tea, and service team. It is not uncommon for an employee who believes their job is secure to wake up and no longer have company access and met with a short five minute zoom call informing them of their termination. The everyone is replaceable mentality is strong with this company. If you do not agree with the leadership they will find a way to terminate you. Growth is rare within instant teams and they do not promote long-term careers, just placeholder jobs. The primary pull of the company is for "military spouse employment" but a majority of the incoming employees are not military connected and a large number of recent leadership hires are not military connected. They need to remove the idea they are promoting employment primarily for military connected individuals and change it to they are are hiring ALL people. Now let me highlight an unfortunate and unethical behavior I witnessed while employed with Instant Team which ultimately lead me to leave the company. I unfortunately witnessed the maltreatment of the SECO graduates. The SECO graduates quit their secure jobs to attend a paid internship/training program and at the completion of the program were supposed to be secured jobs by Instant Teams. Unfortunately these graduates were not secured employment and CPO Erica McMannes even forwarded an email from a graduate to another people operations individual essentially insulting the graduate and did not realize the email had the very person she was insulting CC'd. The graduates were also, without warning, removed from the company slack and did not receive any further communication. (This also cannot be claimed as false information because there is proof this happened). Communication within the company is horrendous. There were many times during my employment I was unable to get clarification on tasks and/or given vague responses. On numerous occasions I sent messages to leadership regarding tasks that were met with no response. Benefits are a joke. I will preface this by stating the health benefits truly did not matter to me as I am a military spouse, but for non-military spouses they are sub-par. The company previously did not have a 401k and for the 2023 benefits they rolled one out. The company however is not matching the 401k which essentially defeats the purpose. Opening a ROTH IRA will do the same job. While the company promotes the "culture and community" they cannot be further from the truth, or more-so the c-suite does not realize how low the morale is and that employees are actively searching for employment elsewhere or have no passion for their role anymore. I was truly passionate about promoting the community until I learned this company did not uphold the values I pride myself on. Throwing a few door dash codes out and quarterly recognition does not promote morale, true change does. They want change. They want job security. The best part of the day is when you turn off your computer.
