Pros
Flexibility
PTO
No Weekends or Late Nights
Free Education though it may not be useful elsewhere
Occasional Overtime
Megan is the best manager and most knowledgeable fire everyone else!
Cons
Working at Penn Foster is like being in a high school… bratty cliques filled with drama and bullying. Management won’t do much until ish hits the fan which is what they clearly want to happen.
Pay is outdated and doesn’t reflect current real world economy. for instance I’ve worked here for 2 years and throughout my duration I’ve always had to work a second job because they don’t pay us enough to pay our bills! Therefore causing exhaustion and burnout.
The promotions/raises we were promised we didn’t receive. Then the excuse became we didn’t guarantee that we could do them in December… okay so the entire department of LSAs are lying? Got it lol.
Management is clueless and they don’t listen we know what’s needed to make the company and our department better for students but they still choose to do what they want. We receive useless updates to things that no one asks for which then breaks something else that wasn’t broken! Either listen to the people on the frontlines or go bankrupt and out of business!
Bereavement time is not long enough 3 days to deal with the death of an extremely close loved one. 3 days to try to prevent yourself from crying or having breakdowns. I’ve been here 2 Years and have lost two loved ones and still showed up not just for the company, my coworkers but for the students also. That needs to change.
Outsourcing to save costs. We’ve started outsourcing work to the Philippines to help with costs. The downside is they speak broken English as it’s not their first language, students call in our chat in and they think they’re being scammed and they’ll literally call in again until they get an American and this is feedback from the students directly! Not only are we outsourcing, but it’s us LSA’s who now have to train them (no additional pay or incentives) for what seems like probably taking our job. We have brought this up to management every Department meeting that we’ve had and they say the same thing, but no one believes that our jobs are not threatened for the cheaper labor. As the previous Department before hours was created, was literally dismantled for our department to be created. Resulting in layoffs of pretty much the entire department so with us having that knowledge, we don’t believe that our jobs are safe, and if you are looking at applying, neither should you.
If you have anxiety or any mental health issues, this is also not the place for you if you make HR aware of it, they will do what they can but at the end of the day you will usually still get written up, etc. I have anxiety disorder, and I have had anxiety disorder for years however, this job has contributed to me having more anxiety. For the last two years, I have literally poured my soul & entire being into this job into being someone in this company within this company, and I used to feel like people understood that but then I felt like it fell on deaf ears. There have literally been nights where I have come home and I just cry because I’m so frustrated with things at work, the changes at work, or the lack of listening at work and that’s when I know it’s time for me to go when I am no longer happy clocking into work and ready to help students every day. It went from a passion to just a job.
Being looked over at work for special projects, etc. Getting iced out by management where they don’t even mention things to you in a conversation things that they know you would be interested in, but instead they have favoritism so they don’t even choose you or even mention you when it comes to projects because they already have it made up in the back of your mind. Who’s their number two or go to person is going to be.
