Access reviews

This is very valuable feedback and I appreciate you offering these insights to me. You’re right. We can do a better job taking care of our team. We are working very hard in that regard. We are currently looking at the makeup of our team to ensure that we are properly and suitably staffed, and that the team is fairly compensated for the work they are doing. We are currently, and aggressively, rolling out some new initiatives, including building a values-based organization with lots of input from team members across the globe. We are also researching market compensation rates for the core business to ensure we are paying competitively and to help recruit and retain the best talent possible for each and every Access branch. Further, we are also creating career paths for the core business to allow for better advancement opportunities and will be rolling those out in 2016. Please know that this is a priority for us right now. I am genuinely sorry that you feel that we have lied to employees or customers. I have never - and will never - support or promote anything of the sort and would act swiftly to address and squash any actions along those lines. I am not sure when you worked here, but new this year we created and rolled out a new vision that includes creating value for our clients, team members and our community. I take that commitment very seriously and we are measuring whether or not we are creating value for those core groups – and we are making progress, but we can always do better. Your other suggestions and “Advice to Management” are well taken and have been shared with the appropriate team members here to ensure we are making the appropriate changes. Thanks again, Rob

Thank you for your very honest feedback. While we clearly have some improvements to make, some assertions you make simply aren’t true. First, I can say, for example, that none of the executives have “golden parachutes” at Access. Second, the Energized! Program was developed simply to improve the general health and wellness of the team. In fact, the initial idea was simply a weight loss contest, but it became much more than that as our planning developed and matured. When we launched the program, we had no idea there could be company cost benefits. The real benefits of the program have come in the form of team members taking better care of themselves, something that is really important to me. Our commitment to caring for the team members health is further illustrated by the improvements we made this year to our benefits package including covering a much larger percentage of family medical coverage and 100% of family medical coverage for many of our team members. In fact, it surprised us when our insurance carrier donated money to the program – after it was created and implemented – to help bolster and improve it. That said, with such great results and many team members taking better care of themselves, we could see a savings in our annual medical costs. However, that is a benefit for the individual team members and the company, not just the company. Plain and simple, the focus is on team member health and wellness, which is and always has been the vision for the Energized! program all along. So, we haven’t seen any improvement in insurance rates, but we are seeing a common theme that our team members enjoy the program and are reaping great benefits - some of which have been life changing. Moving on to wages, you are right that our wages haven’t remained competitive in some markets and specifically one market you mention, the Bay Area, is a place where compensation is highly competitive. As I mentioned in another review and want to reiterate here to you, we are researching market compensation rates currently to ensure our pay is competitive so we can recruit and retain the best talent possible at every Access branch. We are also creating career paths for the core business to allow for better advancement opportunities and will be rolling all of that out in 2016. We do take great care in designing our total compensation and rewards program (which includes TAG bonuses with $25 and $50 gift cards) that is not only generally market-competitive (aggregated across the company our current rates are 97.5% of market rates according to our research), but most importantly helps to show appreciation for our team members and to recognize their efforts. We are also making other changes, like building a values-based organization with lots of input from team members across the globe, to help make Access a better place to work and, hopefully, an employer of choice. Please know that I will pass this feedback along to our managers, so they have this insight. I invite you or anyone with concerns similar to this to reach out to me directly at ralston@accesscorp.com so we can talk about it. Team members are also welcome to do so anonymously, if preferred.