There are so many cons, but it would take too much time to list them all. Here are the main cons to working at HV:
-Extremely low salary:
After working for nearly 3 years at this company, I was earning less than $36,200. Not a living wage and definitely not enough pay for the stuff we had to put up with there. Also, when we switched to WFH in March 2020, they never provided laptops for us or compensated us for having to buy equipment. I had to buy a new laptop to work from home and never received any money from them for it.
-No Career Advancement:
“Promotions” aren’t really promotions. They’re just enough to convince you that you’re moving forward in your career without actually advancing. When I was “promoted,” my “raise” was $700, less than a paycheck. They created the job title “Digital PR Specialist II” to give the illusion of growth, but really it was just another way to keep from promoting specialists to senior specialists like they had worked for.
-External Hires:
They often hired externally instead of promoting internally, for both specialist level positions and directors. This was obviously not good for company morale, since working hard still got you nowhere. Even though I’d been with the company for almost 3 years and was consistently one of the top performers in the department, they chose to hire a senior specialist externally rather than promote several of us who had been there for years and already had the experience.
-Poor Leadership:
We didn’t hear from the owners very often. They would appear for a few minutes in a monthly company meeting, but other than that they didn’t take the time to meet with us or keep us up to date. There was very little transparency. I heard from the owner who was over my department maybe twice in the nearly 3 years I was there, aside from the monthly company meetings. The owners don’t care about making positive changes for employees at the company. Exit interviews and constructive feedback aren’t taken seriously.
-Surprise Layoffs:
We had been told by the owners during the height of the pandemic that things weren’t great but the company was okay and that they would let us know if that changed. Then out of the blue in the fall of 2020 they laid off about 6 employees over a very short time span, some within a few days of each other. The company had around 55-65 employees at the time so this was a big deal. Two of my teammates were laid off and no one had any warning, not even team leads. To add to the damage, the owners did not even acknowledge or address that they’d laid off employees until complaints were made.
-Bad Management:
My director micromanaged us and was difficult to work with. Knowing I had been a top performer in the department for months, he then decided to blame me for quitting and said I hadn’t taken steps towards getting promoted.
-Not Taking Care of Employees:
During the height of the pandemic, HV leadership did not take care of its employees and prioritized themselves over several of my coworkers’ health and safety.
-Lack of Communication:
The departments were very siloed. You don’t really know what’s going on within the rest of the company. Huge lack of transparency. At one point I wasn’t even told that a client had canceled and not to work on them.
-Toxic Culture: There were some awesome, hardworking people there, but as the company got worse they all quit. Most have gone now. Without them, what’s left is a pretty toxic environment.
Clearly I would not recommend working here. You won’t make a living wage and you’ll either never get promoted or it will take years. The leadership is terrible and they don’t seem to want to change. You’ll be overworked and micromanaged. Many clients will cancel after a few months because leadership does not care about actually taking care of them. It’s a constant cycle of new clients and cancellations.