Pros
This company saw the opportunity to expand into remote work, which is very helpful for today’s job market. You are able to adjust your availability easily and hours are flexible. Although you may not always receive your desired number of hours, there are opportunities for shift trades and pick-ups. There are also opportunities for overtime, extra hours, work reduction, and you get a set number of unpaid hours to call out if need be. Supervisors tend to be supportive and understanding. They make it clear that asking questions is encouraged and welcome. They provide ample training and resources for learning. The atmosphere is one of inclusiveness. I wouldn’t call it a “family”, but employees are able to share parts of their life with one another and exchange pleasantries, even remotely. You also get to learn about other positions within the company and get frequent business updates.
Cons
Those who are customer service representatives or sales agents work in a “call center” type environment, even remotely. Most days, it’s call after call after call, and an employees time keeping is heavily managed. It can be incredibly repetitive and mind numbing. The work itself isn’t necessarily the doing of the company, however, the company doesn’t do much do prevent the burn out that comes with. Sure, there are little activities and challenges to do, but no real support on that front. When you’re hired, they say there’s lots of opportunities for job sharing, which would help break the repetitiveness of all the jobs. But those opportunities are very few and far between, and they don’t give many incentives to do that. They also expect you to go above and beyond with every call, but don’t give you incentives to do that. The benefits that they tout (company clinics, in house gym, quiet seating in the call center, etc) only applies to people who actually work at headquarters. There’s not many benefits for remote employees It seems as though the company is so obsessed with keeping labor percentages low. Of course it will be busy at some points, but it seems like they never schedule enough people, so those who are On-Call always have to come in, or they let too many get off work early and end up having to ask people to stay later. Communication is horrendous. There are so many changing policies and forms that are scattered around in different programs. It is important to be adaptable to change, but often time the communication around those changes is slow, confusing, and vague. There isn’t a streamline way of communicating change of policy, urgent issues, technical issues, etc. The resources and programs that are used to complete jobs are all scattered, which makes efficiency impossible. There is no sense of purpose with the job you do. While the company emphasizes customer service and empathy and building relationships with customers, it feels like job doesn’t matter within the company.
