Pros
I have made some lifelong friends here. We have a collective, "We are in this together, so let's make the most of it" partnership with one another. My fellow employees are great, as we all come from different walks of life, but are focused on helping our clients towards success.
Cons
- The base salary for direct service staff (you know, the ones who actually bring in revenue for the company) is absolutely insulting, and is not commensurate to what competing agencies pay for the same job. - Bonus structure (up to $500 per month for exceeding "hours of care") is absolutely dehumanizing. This $6,000 per year should be included in the base salary for employees, but instead, employees are told to "just work harder" if they want to make a livable wage. Getting that bonus is not nearly as easy as they tell you during the interview (105% hours of care nets you $300 monthly and 110% nets you $500 monthly). Think of it as a proverbial "carrot-on-a-stick" that managers are told to use to get employees in the door and to accept the low base pay. -Centerstone frowns upon employees who need to clock overtime in order to meet or exceed lofty expectation goals. If you need to clock overtime to get things done (charting, reports, or scheduling late appointments due to cancellations), it's looked upon as a time-management issue. Many employees just work off-the-clock in order to just keep the peace, avoid write-ups, and to get everything done in a timely manner. -Centerstone does not seem to care about employee turnover, and would rather spend resources on hiring and training a new batch of underpaid and over-worked employees, rather than retaining existing employees, many of which leave as soon as something better comes along. -The average length-of-stay for an employee at Centerstone appears to be about 8 months. This is a huge disservice to our clients, as they then have to get used to the turnover, as (again) Centerstone makes little effort to retain employees. But hey, you get a sandstone Centerstone coaster and $50 if you stay for 5 years! - Very few opportunities for advancement. Unless you are chummy with someone in upper management; everything is a lateral move. This is especially true for Batchelor level employees. The message that Centerstone sends to direct service employees is clear; "You are expendable." -Most direct-service employees are stressed out due to factors that are beyond their control. If a client no-shows or cancels appointments, employees become worried sick that they will either not get their bonuses (again, back to the dehumanizing way that Centerstone pays employees a livable wage) or they will be issued written warnings,performance improvement plans, or threatened with termination. -There is no bereavement leave or sick leave. Yes... you heard that right. If someone in your family passes away, you must use your own PTO to grieve and attend the funeral. If you suddenly get sick, hopefully you banked your PTO. This is an agency that focuses on community mental health, right? Apparently, "Delivering Care that Changes People's Lives" doesn't count if those "People" are employees. -Everything seems to revolve around generating revenue. It appears that Centerstone is extremely focused on buying up struggling behavioral health facilities, rebranding them as Centerstone, restructuring them, and attempting to make them profitable; thus, increasing Centerstone's real-estate and footprint in the business of community based behavioral health. - We are constantly battling this horrible NetSmart Avatar records system that Centerstone, for some reason, invested a lot of money into. We recently went from a modern HTML5 records system to an slow and archaic Java based records system managed by, what looks to be, a "multi-level marketing" company. It honestly looks to be straight out of 2003 or so. -If you notice, Centerstone's feedback to these reviews are the same 4 "canned responses." It really shows the kind of time and energy Centerstone puts into making this a better company for direct-service staff.
