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      Social Nature

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      Social Nature Reviews

      4.4

      79% would recommend to a friend

      (19 total reviews)

      Annalea Krebs

      89% approve of CEO

      81% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.4

      Diversity and inclusion

      4.3

      Culture and values

      4.2

      Senior management

      4.1

      Work/Life balance

      4.1

      Career opportunities

      3.8

      Compensation and benefits

      Social Nature has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 19 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Social Nature employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      19 reviews
      3.0
      10 May 2021

      If you don't know what is broken, how can you fix it?

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Who doesn't want to work in the Natural Products space? - The mission of Social Nature and working in this great industry draws people into this company and is why many people stay for as long as they do. - The type of employees drawn to this industry are generally kind, passionate, and hard-working. - The non-business culture is really bottoms up at SN. Employees take the initiative to host weekly meditation, bring in a zero-waste recycling program, lunch and learns, or monthly fitness challenges. - The CEO will no doubt do everything in her power to ensure this company succeeds. Her top strength in the CliftonStrengths Assessment is Significance. Clifton Strengths describes this as; "People exceptionally talented in the Significance theme want to make a big impact. They are independent and prioritize projects based on how much influence they will have on their organization or people around them. You want to be very significant in the eyes of other people. In the truest sense of the word you want to be recognized. You want to be heard. You want to stand out. You want to be known. In particular, you want to be known and appreciated for the unique strengths you bring. You feel a need to be admired as credible, professional, and successful. Likewise, you want to associate with others who are credible, professional, and successful. And if they aren't, you will push them to achieve until they are. Or you will move on. An independent spirit, you want your work to be a way of life rather than a job, and in that work you want to be given free rein, the leeway to do things your way. Your yearnings feel intense to you, and you honor those yearnings. And so your life is filled with goals, achievements, or qualifications that you crave." - Their values are reflective of the culture. Specifically "Make it happen", "100% for the customer", and "Embrace our shared destiny".

      Cons

      - There have been other negative reviews left from past employees and interviewees, that have somehow been removed. This is an example of the CEO's significance, determination, and lack of openness to feedback. - To say there is high employee turnover would be an understatement. In the year and a bit that I worked for SN over 20 people either left or were let go. The team was only 13 people on average. - SN has been trying to hire developers for over 3 years now. - Micro-management is often disguised as collaboration. At the time, almost every project was going through the CEO for approval. Unfortunately, there was also a constant fear of projects not being "perfect" so shipping projects often took months longer than they should. Successively this meant that staff didn't feel trusted for their expertise, nor that they had any autonomy over their work. - When communicating that employees were leaving or were let go, there was a lack of tact or consideration to how the staff was feeling. - Intimidation was often used as a motivator. When a bad glass door review was posted we were called into a team meeting and pressured to come forward. Then asked to go write a positive review. - Once witnessed a male employee mock a female employee in a meeting and the entire executive team laughed. - The terms "flat hierarchy" and "open door policy" are thrown around. Because employees were often let go without attempting to coach or give the opportunity to correct behaviors, few employees felt safe being honest with their managers about their feelings. Flat hierarchy usually implies that employees can be involved in decision making -People who are promoted to management roles are great at their craft, not at people management and there is little support for them to develop their people management skills.

      avatar
      Social Nature Response
      5y
      As the founder and CEO, I care deeply about the human experience at work and am committed to continuous improvement; and so I have personally responded to this former employee's concerns (see below). For those interested in joining our growing team and our #trynatural mission, I invite you to contact me directly at annalea@socialnature.com if you want to discuss our culture further. After a challenging year, I’m proud to say that we came out of COVID-19 stronger than ever thanks to a resilient team that lived our values to make it happen, be customer obsessed and embrace our shared destiny. Today, we have grown to 25 people and are on track to be 32 by the end of this year! We’ve also expanded our leadership team to include an experienced VP Engineering and a VP Sales who are invested in the growth and development of their teams. Although hiring software engineers in Vancouver is a very real struggle (for all local tech companies), our new VP Engineering and Director of Product Management is on track to building a 10 person #techforgood product and engineering team by the end of this year (which will represent ⅓ of our company). Today, there are many great things happening at Social Nature. I’m proud to share that in March 2021 we were recognized with a Certified Great Place to Work in Canada™ award based on a current staff survey, and in February 2021 the SupportingLines™ Institute recognized Social Nature as having a high-performance culture based on our outstanding employee engagement survey results. To our former team member and the author of this review - thank you for the feedback, there is always something we can learn from these reviews and I understand that your intent is to try and make us better. While I don’t agree with the way things are represented here entirely, I'm truly sorry you didn’t have an exceptional experience. I take Glassdoor feedback seriously and since reading this review, our leadership team has taken several actions: - As a leadership team, we are committed to connecting with our respective teams to understand how we can reinforce flexibility and empowerment at every level. We’re not intending to micromanage and appreciate the feedback. As our team grows, dynamics and ways of working need to change and we recognize this as a never ending improvement process. Thank you for reminding us to be conscious of this. - As a female founder, I'm particularly conscious about issues of diversity and inclusion. We have established a confidential line of communication for employees with the SupportingLines™ Institute, an organization that is an extension of our People and Culture team and that is bound by the coaching code of ethics, so that we can address any HR concerns right away. I also encourage any direct feedback and will be there to listen without judgement and openness. And our leadership team is committed to having 1:1s with their direct reports every two weeks no matter how busy things get, to ensure that any issues are surfaced in a timely fashion and people feel supported. - As our team grows quickly, we are always working on ways to better support our teams and our people leaders, as we know that some of them may be new to this role. This includes coaching opportunities for people leaders and, of course, encouraging upwards feedback from these people leaders' team members in order to help them learn and grow. Recently, the SupportingLines Institute held a workshop for our entire team on how to deliver effective feedback (using the coach approach) so that everyone is empowered to share feedback with each other in an open and mindful way.
      3.0
      2 May 2021

      Could be good, depends on where you are in your career

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - The mission! - People are kind, friendly, living the mission and values genuinely, very collaborative and helpful and can bring their passions into their work e.g. the company holds weekly meditation workshops - Business growth, company is on a good trajectory - Fun social events despite working from home - Every day is different - Terrific clients to work with - For people early on in their career, this is a great place to prove yourself, but you'll need plenty of self-discipline and external mentorship because few colleagues can teach you the HOW to do something, most just tell you what result they want and expect you to figure it out yourself. The ones who can teach the how all seem to be unhappy and burnt out even if they try to 'stay positive' because that's expected all the time. - For tasks/projects, changes are made quickly, adjusting to survey feedback

      Cons

      - Most changes are window dressing to help leadership communicate and increase engagement at team meets instead of ensuring people feel engaged in their work. - Colleagues have expressed lack of trust / psychological safety at work: fear of being demoted / laid off and general 'I can't change this anyways, why pick the fight' are stifling unhappy voices - No upward movement at the manager level: there seems to be more demotions than promotions even though those people were given more responsibility not less. This is extremely discouraging for anyone with career ambition. - Top performers are not rewarded in terms of compensation or title/role progression: you better love the work itself, that's the only reward (higher volume of similar work). - Pivoting towards SaaS can be hard, but especially so when the people who know how to do so and can get you there are not heard or valued, to the point where they're bullied / made fun of in meetings. It's not hard to guess why there's only one full-time engineer left. - It's a sales-driven company, not a product-driven one: product innovation is always last on the priority list. Engineers are also IT. - There is no HR function: the new people ops role is great but seems more like a glorified exec admin role. Management has little HR experience and wouldn't know what to do if any HR issues come up (e.g. bullying from the CEO).

      avatar
      Social Nature Response
      5y
      As the founder and CEO, I’ve openly addressed this current employee’s concerns with my team and immediately took action on their concerns, which I’ve summarized below for reference. For those interested in joining our growing team and our #trynatural mission - I care deeply about the human experience at work and am committed to continuous improvement. I invite you to contact me directly at annalea@socialnature.com if you want to discuss our culture further. To our current team member and the author of this review - Thank you for the feedback, there is always something we can learn from these reviews. While I wish you felt comfortable bringing these concerns up with your manager, I recognize that you are frustrated and felt this was the only way to get our attention. I take Glassdoor feedback seriously and since reading this review, myself and the rest of the leadership team have taken several actions: - I have established a confidential line of communication for employees with the SupportingLines™ Institute, an organization we’ve had on retainer for the last 2 years to be an extension of our People and Culture team. I encourage you to connect with our executive team coach Jeff Smith there, who is bound by the coaching code of ethics. The intention for this is to create a space to share any specific concerns and examples with Jeff so that he can work with me directly to anonymously address your concerns if that pathway of communication feels most accessible right now. I also encourage any direct feedback and will be there to listen without judgement and openness. - To ensure we check in around engagement with staff more directly, I have asked our people managers to commit to bi-weekly 1:1s with our team members no matter how busy things get so that they can help you or others work through any challenges and support you to meet your growth goals. - As a leadership team, we are committed to connecting with our respective teams to understand how we can reinforce flexibility and empowerment at every level. We’re not intending to micromanage and appreciate the feedback. As our team grows, dynamics and ways of working need to change and we recognize this as a never ending improvement process. Thank you for reminding me to be conscious of this. - I’ve made sure that our leadership team is developing growth and development plans for each of their direct reports and revisiting this on a bi-annual basis to ensure we’re developing the leadership capabilities that will help our team members grow. If you don’t have a clear direction on how you can grow at Social Nature, please bring this to your manager’s attention, and we will co-create a plan with you. If you’re reading this as a prospective Social Nature employee, I encourage you to read through some of the other reviews; you’ll notice that Social Nature is recognized as the place to come to for personal and professional growth. As for investing in our product and engineering team, this past year we have brought on a VP Engineering and a Director of Product Management that is building towards a 10 person team by the end of this year which will represent ⅓ of our company. As we have shared in our company town halls, this year we are focused on automating our customer operations through technology and improving our existing user experience so that we can satisfy the 100% YOY growth our business is experiencing. And next year, when we have more capacity, we will focus on product innovation to expand into new customer markets. In the meantime, I invite you to celebrate the fact that we have product/market fit with our core product sampling and review offering and are looking to scale this through technology!
      3.0
      30 Aug 2018

      Lots of Opportunity

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      -Fast Paced -Amazing Industry -Opportunity to work with high-level stakeholders -Strong team

      Cons

      -Not enough organization/resources -Low pay for the amount of work involved

      avatar
      Social Nature Response
      5y
      Thank you for taking the time to share a great review! We're actively taking note of all feedback points to continue to improve the human experience here at Social Nature.
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      Glassdoor has 21 Social Nature reviews submitted anonymously by Social Nature employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Social Nature is right for you.