Milked Dry: Crippled and Reactionary Wellness Company Sans Wellness
Pros
Amazingly talented entry/mid-level employees, easy feeling of comradery between small teams. Parking code for DTLA Arts District public parking lots. As a meat-eater, I enjoyed the chicken, beef, and pork dishes that were provided for internal, external, and board member meetings.
Cons
Tiny teams, people kept being fired or leaving until there was basically less than 5 people left on the Marketing team, with expectations remaining the same (please note, this was long before COVID-19). Budgets were cut constantly, often without owners of those budgets being notified. Nothing remained as was signed off on or agreed, leading to long stretches of confusion. The decision-maker table (both exec team & the board) consisted of white males with a huge lack of interest in changing the fact. Rampant tokenism, with obvious pay disparities between both gender and race employees. Considering their logo, and the rumors of change coming, it was sad that nothing ever actually changed as there was great potential. The head of HR needs to be closely examined as there were multiple accounts of questionable behavior and word use. Who were victims of these instances supposed to report these occurrences to? There was a major lack of trust across all departments, which stemmed from top-down. No employee empowerment (a huge and very important element lacking), however, a large number of employees were very capable, passionate, and experienced they are just not seen, heard, or appreciated. Terrible work-life balance, faux claims of being a wellness company with absolutely no wellness provided to their employee’s lives. Long work hours, no company respect for after-hour contact from upper management. 2+ emails a night from the CEO (anywhere from 9pm - 3am) about nonsense or something he wanted to try to accomplish with a budget and team bandwidth as limiting as he knew. Revolving chair of CMO due to unfortunate CEO shortcomings with decision-making capabilities and lack of true marketing prowess. It was a constant problem and something that is not ok. Not a truly inclusive space for Black and POC employees. Lacks representation and diversity across the organization. This is extremely unfortunate considering the logo and namesake of the company. Due to lack of trust and understanding from upper management we were constantly crippled in between a state of not doing anything and being allowed to try stunts with less than 50% of the resources needed to make them actually successful (both in team/number of employees and budget) and then those stunts not performing and just receiving less and less trust, funds, and flexibility because of those unavoidable results. It got to the point where employees stopped bringing forward ideas on programs or pitches because there was no point or direction, one of the saddest things to witness. Values are nonexistent, they would change constantly and be regurgitated to us off of a cold projection screen maybe once a year as what is expected to be true, not what is the reality/true feelings of your employees, stakeholders, and farmers involved in the brand. Values are formed authentically from within over time and represented without question, not delegated.
