7y
Hello Anonymous,
I'm sorry to read this and I can't help but feel your experience at and departure from SmartBox had to be less than great. I'm truly sorry for that, and as the leader of the company, own all the responsibility for that. We take a tremendous amount of pride in our work environment and culture we've created. We have always put our focus and energy into growing our people, which is why I feel we've been awarded Best Place to Work (among others) over the past few years.
It seems your review and comments are quite dated from several of your comments. I'll do my best to reply to each here, starting with our outsourcing to the Philippines. We have a great relationship with our PH team, and in early 2017 myself and 2 VP's even made the long trip to visit our long-term employees in Manila face to face. While we still have a few folks there who help us with our administrative and backend needs, we felt it would be more efficient if we moved many of our jobs to the US, and since then have reduced our Philippines team by 75%.
To our remodel that we started in 2016 and completed in 2017 - I’ll be the first to admit the remodeling did expand larger than we originally intended. I think we built out a very modern space with private workspaces along with collaborative and lounge areas. Our 42-person Derby Training Room has been one of our best additions and has proven invaluable. It's something we're very proud of and has been instrumental in our growth since then.
When you see any employee depart any company, not just SmartBox, it's almost always due to a cultural misalignment or performance issue. As every company does, we have experienced changes in our workforce as our product and processes adapt to the market and our clients needs. We've never "laid off, hired back, then laid off again." We've continued our consistent growth year-over-year as verified by both INC magazine’s INC500 and Louisville Business First’s FAST50 and earning our spot as one of the fastest growing companies in Louisville and the United States 3 years running.
Our people lead the way, and as part of that philosophy, every 12-18 months our entire company participates in a structured planning exercise to chart out where we're going to put our energy and resources towards. Every employee from the top to bottom participates and contributes to our overall operating plan and goals. This is driven by market changes, client needs changing, as well as our constant drive to innovate and build a better mouse trap. Those that are change averse won't be good fits here in our nimble and fast-growing company.
Keep Moving Forward,
Colin
