PeopleKeep Reviews

3.1

50% would recommend to a friend

(48 total reviews)
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Victoria Hodgkins

48% approve of CEO

43% positive business outlook

PeopleKeep has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 48 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The PeopleKeep employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

48 reviews
2.0
30 June 2019

CEO change in July 2019 threatens company culture

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

We help people who have been left behind by traditional group health insurance. Customers love our product, even though it isn't a fit for everyone. We have 5-star reviews and high customer support ratings. Most employees care deeply about each other and about our customers. Working at such a small company, there's been room to take initiative and influence the company's direction. The company culture was one of the main reasons many of us stayed despite PeopleKeep's struggle to find growth. When Eric Morgan became Interim CEO in October 2018, he brought a calmer temperament than our former CEO (who was known for destructive outbursts). When Eric took over, he didn't disrupt the culture. He let existing managers guide the company toward a period of more open ownership over responsibilities. Most of the positive Glassdoor reviews came during this 9 month period.

Cons

But now our culture is threatened by a new CEO. Most of the people who built our product and company culture have left the company. Victoria Hodgkins was hired as COO a few months ago. Then the board of directors decided to appoint her as CEO even though our most recent employee survey was the most negative it has been in years. In the survey, employees specifically called out Victoria's actions as reasons they weren't happy. She only gave their concerns lip service. In fact, in an all hands meeting she announced that she had been brought in as a change agent and that anyone who didn't like the new direction should consider whether they still belonged at PeopleKeep. Victoria tried to change things without asking about what was working well. This has caused a high amount of friction among the leadership team. A few weeks after the all hands meeting, employee morale took another turn for the worse. Our long-time CTO announced he was quitting. Eric Morgan also announced he would step down from interim CEO on July 1 and that Victoria would be promoted to CEO. He said that PeopleKeep would hire an outsourced engineering company from Albania to audit the Product Development team's people and processes and make recommendations on what to change. He said the Product Development team would have to start following the outsourced company's processes. Within days, the Head of Engineering and Head of Product both resigned. All of this happened just after we started ramping up to build a new product (which had only become possible after new regulations were passed). I'm not sure why we're making so many big changes at the exact moment when we need our company to rally together to make our next product. But I'm concerned that Victoria doesn't value the culture that made PeopleKeep a great place to work. If you like taking orders you might do well here. Most people who challenge anything seem to be pushed out of the company.

2.0
11 Nov 2019

Polarizing leadership threatens company

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The heart of a good company is still here. There are a lot of talented employees who are great to work with and individual departments (to the extent that the manager has latitude over them) can be positive places to grow your career. Brand-new employees may also be happy if they’re a good fit with the new culture – that is, comfortable with a hierarchical leadership style and carrying out marching orders. If work is something where you're happy to just show up, put in your time, and stay out of larger strategic discussions, you'll probably be happy here.

Cons

New leadership uprooted key programs and cultural values to the detriment of the company. Questions weren't asked and time wasn't taken to understand the company, the industry it operates in, or the in-house knowledge of other employees. After an extreme amount of pushback (and a drop in eNPS of 52 points), the new CEO made it clear that anyone unhappy no longer had a place at PeopleKeep. Now left unchecked, management has become thin-skinned and mean-spirited. The approach to conflict resolution is to shut down discussion and exert authority. Extremely negative reactions are common when management is challenged and people who have different opinions are routinely uninvited or excluded from key meetings. Senior leadership exists in an intentionally built echo chamber. All new hires are treated to a smear campaign against former and long-serving employees, who are painted as inflexible and not interested in growth. They’ve been known to talk badly about other employees behind closed doors and post negative statements about them online. There's no willingness to believe that those who disagree with them may actually be arguing in good faith. What may be most concerning for PeopleKeep, though, is the brain drain that’s occurred since the management changes. More than a third of the company has left, taking vital industry and product knowledge with them. Senior leadership has very limited knowledge of the health benefits landscape and an even poorer understanding of how to build software. Struggles with reasonable expectations for the outsourced development team are common, and they routinely stumble over concepts and terminology key to the industry. Overall, PeopleKeep has gone from a company that prized intelligent colleagues engaging in informed discussion to a top-down operation that prizes easy acceptance. The results have already started to appear and they’re not good – crucial product features have malfunctioned and the top competitor has gained an edge that will be difficult to take back.

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PeopleKeep Response
6y
Thank you so much for your candid feedback. We never intended you to feel the way you do, we’re so sorry we caused you to have such a poor experience. We’d like to understand some of your views better so we can change! Can you provide us some insight so we can make adjustments? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vGCSXc28fkDVaDTVROMA0CpPFiDoyO7QBrU50xPEKvY/edit
3.0
9 Sept 2019

If you're considering an offer here, there's some things you should know.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people at this company are amazing and the benefits are good. Everyone is fun to be around and is an expert in their field. People are regularly recognized for their accomplishments, and some people play games every Wednesday, which is super awesome.

Cons

The current CEO is directly responsible for our entire product team leaving. I have personally seen her insult other employees both to their face and behind their back, and have even seen her blow up at our offshore product team (who by the way is not bad). She gets upset with people when she doesn't understand something. She has held meetings to ask for feedback, but doesn't bother to listen to any of it, and in many cases makes it very clear she thinks it's a dumb suggestion.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 48 Reviews

Glassdoor has 50 PeopleKeep reviews submitted anonymously by PeopleKeep employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if PeopleKeep is right for you.