COVID brought out the very worst in people and it really took a beating on overall income coming from a business standpoint. EQR is only different in that it seemed to be on a larger scale of driving knives into others backs in this sense.
Top tier corporate employees got to work from home but mandated that we had to come into the office every day. This isn’t something new in businesses but pushing to get open during the middle of a pandemic because everyone else is doing it isn’t the sort of “innovation” that puts their workers at the forefront of their thinking.
You get rewarded for your hard work with even more work from downsizing which they were dishonest about from the very beginning. Don’t ever think that podding several communities together is “not downsizing”. They try to spin this as a good thing because they are experimenting and other rental properties are doing it. Again, this is not innovation, it is putting more stress on the backs of their loyal workers who have pleaded for more help and instead get rewarded by downsizing. Managers are strained to the point they are taking it to their leasing consultants to do better work while not taking overtime. this leads to work being done off the clock to save your job. Corporate calls this “efficiency”, everyone else will call it responsibilities that don’t correlate to the jobs pay scale.
This was once a great company that I was proud to work for, now it has gone to pleasing their stockholders (which they are very open about talking to as a positive point) and moral has never been lower. They also recently got to letting go a whole bunch of people. Benefits are dwindling (discounts are now “industry standard” when it used to be much better than the industry), morale is low and the only thing stringing along the rest of the workforce at EQR is finding the next thing.
Don’t consider this a career if you get hired, they will fire you for no reason other than not liking you.
