HIPR reviews

Pay and benefits are subpar: Management seems to be committed to giving their workers as little as possible. Do you live in a state where paid sick leave isn't mandated? Then don't expect management to give you any paid sick leave--but someone in your same position, who lives in a state with mandated paid sick leave, will have this benefit. Management also withholds benefits for as long as possible--not giving you any much-needed benefits, such as health insurance, during your probationary period. They seem to expect their employees to have the privileges of being on a family member's existing healthcare plan or of living with roommates/family to be able to afford living expenses. Workload is very high: The firm has retained more clients than it has capacity to have. For years, employees have raised concerns, and for years, management has disregarded these concerns and implemented seemingly reactionary and short sighted policies. For instance, in 2020, rather than assure employees of extended/indefinite WFH during the pandemic, management unrolled a "WFH Benefits Program," which required that writers promise to do at least one extra project a week in order to have indefinite WFH. At the same time, management also seemed to drag their feet with extending WFH, which caused unnecessary stress among workers. Management also dangles bonuses as a way to justify offering low base salaries--but this means that you will have to take on hours of extra work in order to make ends meet. However, these bonus opportunities have dwindled since management started hiring independent contractors from their other company, Talentopia; management seems to claim that these independent contractors are meant to "help" the writing department with workloads, but because independent contractors are poorly trained and have no incentive to produce quality work, their projects add to the editing workload of Team Leads and Team Lead Assistants while draining possible bonus opportunities for writers, which leaves writers with limited opportunities to supplement their low wages at the company. Upward mobility is more of a punishment than a reward: Management also has unclear policies with regards to promotions. Some writers are hired as "Writer - Team Lead track" while others aren't. Team Leads have immensely high workloads, which leads to extreme burn out, so if you're a writer and don't want the stress of client complaints and unclear communication between departments or even from management when they unroll a new policy with barely any notice, then you can maybe get Senior Writer, but this promotion also comes with the threat of demotion. If you don't hit a certain performance metric on KPI, the company's confusing and arbitrary performance measurement system, then you lose the extra income of Senior Writer. Also, as Senior Writer, you are given the most challenging cases, often with little reprieve. In short, you are punished for doing your job well, but you are also punished when you struggle with completing an exuberantly high workload (by being disqualified from monthly bonuses based on an arbitrary and clouded KPI system). Favoritism leads to little accountability for fair treatment: If management likes you, you might have an okay time at Hudson. But if they don't, they will overlook you for promotions or give you lower bonuses, or deny you raises or other requests. They also offer people different starting wages and do not have a transparent pay scale to keep them accountable for fair treatment. Lack of transparent policies cause confusion and sometimes chaos within and across departments: Management often makes changes on filing strategies of I-140 and I-129 cases based on a single client complaint. They also recently rolled out a new project management system to "help" Team Leads, called PMS much to almost everyone's dismay, with very little warning and blamed others for its hasty launch and its poor reception among workers. Further, there is no clear grievance policy, so you never know if your next mistake will also be your last. These non-transparent policies keep employees on edge and take up precious work time to try to sort out rather than attend to the case preparation of our clients.

The work culture is extremely dysfunctional. Almost as a rule, the company retains more clients than it can handle according to the "normal" workflow. The excess is managed somewhat by writers and team leaders taking on bonus projects, which are voluntary but strongly incentivized due to the low base salary. While the company nominally prides itself on drafting excellent documents tailored to each client, quantity is clearly more important than quality. Still, the overflow is such that the company delivers some documents to clients late, and some clients have even resorted to drafting their own documents. Many employees have been vocal in raising concerns with management in a good-faith effort to improve working conditions. The company's response has not been encouraging. For instance, two long-time employees were recently fired under questionable circumstances. The company has also been employing contractors through a different organization with apparently different standards for compensation and the quality of the work itself. Lack of transparency in hiring, client retention, and general decision making practices is what you can expect here. It's a shame since the work we do is so important.