The Production Team is so deeply entangled in drama, jealousy, and discontent.
It is definitely a team that gets the short end of the stick all the time: it is a typical production environment that includes manual labor with full coverall gowning in cleanrooms that are not able to maintain adequate temperatures and schedules that don’t allow for much flexibility. The company does not truly care about their associate’s mental or physical health since it is part of the job responsibilities to gown into an ISO7 environment and be stuck there for a few hours. Once production associates are fully trained and on the hamster wheel of daily processing, they don’t really ever get the opportunity to get off; many personnel get burnt out really quickly, and management has not done anything about it and have zero future solutions either.
While the Production Team is fairly large, the company does not typically back fill positions. So while some personnel will eventually get the opportunity to stop regularly processing in the cleanroom, it means that those who are stuck in the rotation need to process more often. It creates a toxic work environment where employees feel the need to sacrifice their own mental, physical, and emotional well-being for the betterment of their coworkers and the company to stay on track with goals. It is difficult to be excited for additional responsibilities and projects when the same work, scheduling, and processing demands are still expected. The lack of backfilling creates a weird team dynamic and ultimately sets the everyone up for failure because there is no plan for transitioning personnel out of the cleanroom while still ensuring there is bandwidth for PTO/sick leave/injuries/mental health days.
There is unnecessary jealousy and resentment from immature coworkers due to their perception that Production supervisors and the manager “play favourites”, despite them actually delegating tasks based on merit and tenure. The casual work environment then becomes incredible unfavorable since coworkers gossip and spread rumors in the laboratory areas and cleanrooms, where management and HR are unable to know what is going on or verify any hearsay. Honestly, it’s a huge Production Team issue that coworkers get close and feel like because they are all friends, they can treat the workplace as their playground; in general, I would say it is not a professional work environment.
There are two offices: one in San Francisco and one in Indy. The CEO works out of the SF office and it is clear that they are the favourite child. Any complaints that come out of the Indy office fall on deaf ears and the CEO will pretend to address them, but cover it up with excuses and lack of solutions just to save face and make the company look good. HR is also appalling at the Indy site with personnel that lack the knowledge of employee salaries, job descriptions, and schedules. It feels like a slap in the face to reach out to HR and experience an unproductive conversation, when they should be there as a helpful resource. Generally, it is difficult to feel fully supported or that the company is a united workforce when there isn’t adequate communication or streamlined policies and treatment across the two offices.
Projects change on a daily basis and information is not disseminated properly or even timely sometimes. There is often little to no thought, scientific rationale, statistical data, or risk-based approaches used when making decisions. This causes a lot of time wasted fixing issues that were caused by rash decisions and root cause problems not being fully discovered due to rushed choices. Sometimes teams end up tirelessly working on a task only for it to be completely scrapped and have to start over.
There is a lack of resources in all aspects. Onboarding and training is not streamlined or quality controlled; it is constantly pushed aside for other projects and priorities with trainees getting vastly different experiences based on when they were hired and who trains them. Those with direct reports do not get any people management training and have zero resources to grow that skillset and no support from upper management. There are no true growth maps that outline tangible targets and pathways for growth in positions, so there is no way to truly know what is required for a promotion. However, promotions are primarily based off tenure, but management doesn’t typically share what was tangibly demonstrated for that promotion to be deserved, so it is incredibly confusing how success is measured. There is a lack of actionable feedback or quality 1-on-1s that provide goal setting opportunities and honest, transparent conversations on quality of work. Meetings and huddles that are supposed to align team members are not utilized well; they often have no prior planning or thought put into them and end up wasting time.
TL;DR: From my perspective, if you accept a position on the Production Team here, you will experience an infinite amount of stressful and tense moments, burn out due to the tight deadlines and unrealistic goals set by management, a lack of adequate resources to excel at your job, little to no actionable feedback to advance and grow your skillset, supervisors who feel threatened by your intelligence, undermined by your success, and overstepped when you speak up, coworkers who will gossip and spread false rumors about you, HR who will justify false narratives when it is convenient for them, a CEO who is complacent in your misery, and a production manager who felt pigeon-holed into her position, with no real desire to build up quality leaders or truly care to see your career grow. It is my recommendation to have an exit plan if you’re going to accept a position at Ossium Health on the Production Team, otherwise you will get sucked into the endless cycle of toxic productivity and hate your time there.
