Always Changing Work from Home Policy
- if you interview and they say we offer flexibility, do not believe them. Part of what drew me in to this company was the ability to WFH with some serious flexibility. I like a truly hybrid environment. They have altered the policy 4 times in 2 years taking us away from home more and more often, effectively resulting in a pay cut for all of the money lost on gas, transit passes, food, childcare, etc. This is all despite most meetings with anybody still taking place over Teams, even when you’re all in the same building. They’re now forcing us to enter what days we WFH on our timesheets, for what we all assume will be another change/announcement of a formal tracking system from badge swipes or something
Micromanagement
- higher ups do not trust anyone enough to just let them do their jobs, they need their sign off on anything and everything. The company acts like it wants to move quickly on things but it’s impossible to do that when you feel your boss or boss’s boss breathing down your neck and demanding you listen to their input on even the wording of an email/project update sent only to 8 people in your own department
Lack of communication (or anything really) from HR
- policies and procedures are removed without (or barely) any notice. Feeling sick after a COVID vaccine? When I started nearly 3 years ago you had the ability to take a day to recover, and even then most people would WFH for 4 hours doing the important tasks that needed to be done then maybe use the remainder of the day to recover. This past year that policy was removed without a word to anyone or put anywhere. People got the shot to protect themselves, and many were left having to use the paltry PTO they get in order to recover, even when the company was the one offering the vaccines at an Invenergy sponsored vaccine clinic on site. Instead of accepting that some people would be willing to work some of the day while trying to stay healthy, they opted to either make people take PTO and have less work get done, or have people work feeling ill and have worse quality work be done
- The twice/year promotion cycle was rolled back to just once/year without telling anyone, of which we all had to find out privately either from our direct managers or as complaints from others who were told earlier in the year their manager told them they’d be putting them up for promotion/title changes soon.
- HR has nowhere to even put/file complaints effectively, you have to email the general contact and maybe you’ll get a response where the most empathy they’ll share with you is something along the lines of « I’m sorry you feel that way »
Ineffective DEI programs
- barely worth the pixels to write about them, they seem to only exist so the company can say they have them. They have no power to advocate for those they represent, and their efforts are contained to some meals/food they sell or having someone come in to speak to the group
Benefits
- paltry. A measly 3% match on your 401k (which they disguise as « up to 50% of a 6% match »), mediocre at best insurance, only 8 company holidays (nothing between NYD and Memorial Day, no MLK, no Juneteenth, etc.), and 21 PTO days that also count as your sick days as well. The salaries are well reported to be below industry average for all positions
Old School Mentality
- the entire C-Suite and most EVPs/SVPs are old white men who prop each other up and refuse to listen to anyone lower than them. They don’t understand most people aren’t inspired by their stories of moving from coal/gas/oil companies to a renewable energy company, what would inspire us is fair compensation and knowing we have higher ups who have our back
