COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:
Pay and benefits are very much on the lower end of the scale, especially compared to other similarly-sized firms. SWA pays lipservice to branding itself as a place “that cares”, a firm that “tries to do good” in the community – which seems like a way of attracting talented, altruistic employees who are willing to sacrifice their higher wages in exchange for a hope of making a difference.
SWA matches 4% (yes, that’s 4%, not a typo) of your 401K contribution. Just to be clear, that means 4% of what you contribute to your 401K – it’s not your yearly salary.
When yearly performance bonuses are handed out, management admitted to me that the bonuses were lower than other firms, but that was “how things are” at SWA. In 2017, the CEO emailed a VP, and (presumably mistakenly) cc’d the entire company, demanding the bonuses be reduced even further.
EMPLOYEE RETENTION:
SWA has a turnover culture, which becomes evident almost immediately. Despite being a small/mid-size firm of around 140 people, a few employees leave every week.
SWA has an exclusionary, difficult work culture. A few examples: management often doesn’t acknowledge lower employees in the hallway; supervisors will complain about one employee in earshot of another; managers publicly chastise employees about private matters. In late 2017, the entire IT department quit, leaving the management scrambling to replace the entire team. In 2018, one of my co-workers, who I knew well, who clearly was having issues with SWA’s pressure, started talking about breaking down and actually mentioned suicide because of a supervisor who was harassing him. He went to HR to ask for support and was terminated the next day, escorted out the door.
MANAGEMENT CULTURE:
Besides the CEO bonus email, there have been far too many other slip-ups in distributing sensitive emails on a “SWA ALL” company-wide basis – including several instances where personnel sent out entire private email chains with HR and/or supervisors discussing employees.
Every few months, employees attend “voluntary” internal branding brainstorming sessions, which feel very compulsory. These sessions do not count for “hours worked” (as the multiple management emails will tell you), and lunch is not provided.
HUMAN RESOURCES:
SWA has an excellent HR department that knows how to retain, listen to, and engage with its employees. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if management listens to HR. I’d suggest that management listen to its support staff – but then again, good staff can only do so much when the CEO comes and asks you to double-check those numbers to see if there is a way to give its employees less.
