Evolve reviews

3.0

40% would recommend to a friend

(424 total reviews)

Brian Egan

48% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

Evolve has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 424 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Evolve employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Hotels & Travel Accommodation industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

424 reviews
2.0
Aug 19, 2019

An Unfortunate Downward Spiral

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent, new office right in the middle of downtown Denver. Two company-wide meetings per month. One at the start of the month where the CEOs go over updates on how the company is doing, talk about what’s next and review industry insights. It’s great to see their perspectives and the impact your team is making from a high level. Both meetings are followed by happy hours which are awesome opportunities to connect with others in the company you don’t see on a daily basis. I admire the CEOs for all they’ve done over the course of 8 years to get Evolve to where it is now. You'll get experience with Salesforce CRM. Evolve is positioned in a unique way to help homeowners market and book their properties with a fresh approach in the vacation rental industry. If money is of little concern, you’re within a couple years out of college, and you’re looking for an entry level job at a young company in Denver, Evolve may be a fine fit.

Cons

TLDR: There are countless things under the surface desperately begging to be addressed and contributing to this sinking workplace. If either pay, benefits or work/life balance were comparable with other high growth companies, maybe people would stick around. Instead, any genuine people you meet won’t be there for long because they’ll realize they could be treated significantly better elsewhere. If you’re in your mid-late 20’s or above looking to elevate your career and be compensated fairly for the value you bring to the table, this is not the place. They claim they care about the employee experience, but when they use the same words of how they “won’t stop looking to improve” for over a year with little change, how could anyone be confident leadership is doing what they say? Turnover is through the roof. They will underplay it like it’s normal to happen anywhere, but the unusually high amount of people leaving at Evolve is questionable and bound to make anyone think twice. The company has potential to be successful but it’s currently deteriorating because the people holding it up are not appreciated and are grossly under compensated in all areas. Management & Favoritism: There's a frightening inconsistency among management styles where certain employees are heavily favored despite their obvious lack of effort and competence. This had me regularly questioning the ethics of working here which I’ve never had to do anywhere else in my career. Favoritism at its finest is glaringly apparent on many team. Managers are fully aware of the constructive feedback employees give, yet only empty promises remain months later after recurring conversations. Lack of Standards: Team and individual metrics might look impressive on dashboards, but you’re looking through rose colored glasses if you don’t notice there are numerous shady tactics people use to cheat to get their numbers among multiple teams, leading to skepticism that erodes trust. It’s baffling how managers notice alarming red flags and don’t care. Hours: You're micromanaged to the minute. You took 50 min for your mandatory 30 min lunch? Better stay 20 min later at some point in the week to get your entire 40 hours in which you’ll need to sustain living in the Denver area. They aggressively dissuade overtime and get frustrated when it happens even with explanation. Being required to clock in and out for every single minute is again a sign of lack of trust and insulting to the ones who are reliable. Pay: It is NOT competitive. This has been the elephant in the room creating a tense environment. It’s seriously not possible to live in a decent apartment/house in the Denver area on the wages you’re given and expect to save anything, have any spending money or be constantly stressed about paying bills. Denver is an enormously popular city now and the pay is certainly not in line with the market. Neglecting any mature conversation regarding a raise makes you feel undervalued, especially when yearly raises are minimal at best. How do people get by? Most commonly people will admit to living in less than ideal areas outside of Denver (many of which have long commutes) and pile on debt. Or, they have ample help from their families to get by or live with their parents. This reality is a major struggle, should not be ignored and is fueling turnover. If actions speak louder than words, ensuring pay is in line with the market is not a priority for the leadership team. Benefits: Severely lacking, but I give credit to the team as they’ve been enhanced since the start of 2019. Health insurance is covered for specific plans (completely for the HDHP and partially for others). A 401K with a 4% match with T Rowe Price is available and they’re working on incorporating equity as part of the compensation package. PTO is one of the lowest for a US company - a cringeworthy one day per month and you’re instructed to take it at certain times of the year. 3 paid sick days per year. No perks on any sort of travel, not even to stay at one of Evolve’s 11K+ properties. Teams: The team events I’ve gone to I’ve paid for food, drinks and activities. The base for team bonding is potlucks for lunches because it's all employee funded and provided. Let’s call it what it is: a way for the company to sit back and hype it up to be a team event without any effort on their end. You're given 10 min to go socialize and eat because you have to get back to your desk to work and/or keep picking up calls. The ability to work from home is rare, wildly inconsistent and dependent on favoritism from your manager. To be clear: this is not a typical high growth company you might envision where it’s laid back, people can be held accountable, and most days are accompanied by free snacks/lunch, etc. Despite how cool any promotional material may look, you should know it’s bare bones.

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Evolve Response
6y
Hi, to start off - thanks for being so thorough with your review. Even though you've left Evolve, it shows your dedication and we appreciate you taking the time. We're happy to hear you enjoyed our space, monthly meetings, and our founders - we agree they're all pretty great. However, we're sorry to hear about the rest. To provide some insight about pay - we're consistently evaluating Evolve against the local market and will continue to do so moving forward. We're not sure which other companies/roles you're comparing us to, however, we can confirm that we are competitive with our compensation. We do hire for a number of entry-level support roles and pay obviously varies by team. That said, all of our full-time team members do receive benefits and we’re very upfront about specifics related to pay during the interview process. Regarding our perks compared to other growth companies - as you may know, we actively made the decision to forgo things like free lunches and instead chose to invest in better benefits for our employees, which have been improved recently as you pointed out. We're also sorry you feel that you were unable to advance your career here. We do have quite a few internal moves happening each month, as we're sure you've seen announced during our kickoffs. You also mention that turnover is high, and while we can't share exact numbers, we can confirm that our turnover is below the average rate for the hospitality industry. We do support numerous team building events across the company, including town halls and kickoffs, the annual Rockies game and Christmas party, and most recently at our trivia night. However, while we love that our teams also plan their own outings, we obviously cannot fund each and every one. As we're sure you know, things are always changing here. While major change doesn't happen overnight, we are moving at a steady pace. We disagree that nothing has changed in the past year, and we're sorry you feel that way. Within the last few months, we've made some essential additions to our leadership that began making changes almost immediately - most notably the major improvements to our benefits offering. Regarding management and training, we recently hired a new Director of Training and Development, and we're excited to see the positive impact this role will have on our teams. We’re also working on new ways to gather feedback from team members to help ensure we’re always aware of opportunities for improvement. Thanks again for taking the time to send in your feedback - we wish you the best in the future.
1.0
Oct 5, 2023

Used to be great

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working from home, the people you work with, what it used to be

Cons

What to say. I loved the place when I started and writing this makes me sad. I’m not naive to how corporations work, but this one operates as a master manipulator. They threw a lot of money at “culture” for a long time, hired recklessly, bragged about their balance sheet, and then announced layoffs in May. They said 14% was very intentional, they chose that number so they wouldn’t have to do it again. And here comes September where they’ve laid off 20% more and dissolved another two or three teams that they didn’t call layoffs. So we’re talking probably 36% reduction in force in 4 months. That should make anyone nervous. They unceremoniously dumped some of their most valuable, tenured employees. Kept a couple teams in limbo for almost three weeks while they decided what to do with them. Sent their guest service team offshore and told the current team working that job that they could work until middle of October until the offshore team is trained, or collect severance early if they are “unhappy and want to just quit now.” Decent enough offer until you realize that the employees who took them up on it won’t qualify for unemployment. Evolve is not a hospitality company. They are a sales driven call center with departments that don’t even know what the others are doing. They are disorganized and reckless at best and dishonest at worst. I’m sorry to have to write this. I wish I still believed in them. Hopefully they can get back on track but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in its current state.

1.0
Jun 1, 2024

Watch for planted fake reviews!!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The team that Evolve either laid off or chased out. So they aren't even a pro anymore

Cons

They are creating an incentive program to have people plant good reviews. Please don't buy the "It's great here" reviews and read the OVERWHELMING number of honest reviews. Bad leaders Bad processes Bad communication Lying about outsourcing, it's not for peak season or "transactional tasks". Despite owner and guest dissatisfaction, they are outsourcing nearly all roles. Layoffs Pay cuts Demotion due to the incessant dissolution of vital departments. Massive employee flight They think restructuring is going to save them, 3 restructures in 3 years, that reeks of instability. Refusal to file a WARN act notice for any of their layoffs They ask workers to work off the clock. Apparently it's a "reasonable request" for workers to check emails and respond BEFORE we clock in. Diversity is a joke, they laid off the DEIB leader and mostly defunded the ERGs which nobody can get time to go to anyhow. You will be expected to accept lie, after lie with the pathetic disclaimer that we should Embrace Change. They cannot keep their story straight and they loathe questions about their flailing lack of direction Tech used improperly or incompletely. Duplicate programs cost duplicate the amount but they ignore that. Abysmal culture. The most toxic and ungrateful employer. Senior execs bailing, managers leaving, service roles laid off we can't have half the staff we did a year ago. Lawsuits from guests pending. Numbers over names. They couldn't care less about anyone, just their baseless, inaccurate metrics. The most extreme micromanagement you'll ever experience, and I've got tons of call center experience. You'll be on a PIP based on their poorly operating programs. They do not care one bit about the Evolver Experience. The top of the flywheel is a boldface lie, they've crushed us all underneath it. The company follows an asset light model and has had negative cash flow for some time. The ship has already sunk, to be honest.

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Evolve Response
1y
Thank you for taking the time to share your review. While we always encourage teammates to leave Glassdoor reviews, we can assure you that we have never provided incentive for reviews. We appreciate the additional feedback you have shared with us regarding frustrations and it is never our intention to create the experience you have detailed here. We encourage you to speak with your direct manager or your designated People Business Partner so that we can work together to ensure a more fulfilling experience for you on our team. The decisions and changes made over the last few years were most certainly difficult and were made to put us in a position to be a meaningfully profitable business. These efforts are paying off and ultimately benefit our customers, stakeholders, and teammates alike.
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Glassdoor has 448 Evolve reviews submitted anonymously by Evolve employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Evolve is right for you.