As a dietitian, I have felt more like an “anchor” for helping to keep account contracts rather than a valued member of the company. RD accomplishments are lauded by management, but it feels empty given the ways we are devalued. When it comes to brass tacks—salary, benefits, work quality, relationships with management—the occasional pats on the back do seem trite.
Salary
For example, I have jumped through all the hoops of their clinical ladder program and receive outstanding performance evaluations and now just barely make a salary at the 50th percentile, all while having shouldered an untenable workload of high-acuity patient groups with little backup. Management blames the low pay on the account, not the company. Yearly raises are clouded in mystery. You go through a convoluted annual review process where you essentially sign off on compliments. Actual money is kept out of the conversation, because “no one knows” what corporate is going to gift you come January. The review process feels like a ridiculous and icky charade. Moreover, my salary increases have been messed up in one way or another about four times come the January raises. Morrison does their best to fix mistakes (I think), but a laughable length of time will pass, and account managers usually can’t give any useful or timely updates. There is minimal transparency.
Benefits
Benefits are satisfactory but not as good as those of our direct account employees, which makes it difficult to be proud of our affiliation with Morrison. I do not trust the corporate benefits department after they waited over a year to update my address in their system, causing all my benefits selections to count as “change of address” selections rather than for the upcoming year. I didn’t catch it and then didn’t have health insurance. “Tough luck” essentially was the response I received from account HR and corporate.
Work Quality
Workload is account-specific, of course. My personal experience has been negative. I was thrown under a bus multiple times in multiple ways. The productivity reports we fill out every day are diminishing, even if the data is supposed to be used for good and not punitive purposes. The value of my work is reduced to boxes on an Excel spreadsheet, because management has never spent time with me to really know what I do. They make their own interpretations based on numbers that my fried brain tries to recall at the end of the day.
I recently was asked to provide my resume to show to a new account as an example of a “high quality” dietitian Morrison hires. I’m happy they believe I am high-quality, but requesting my resume was deceitful. There is a clear trend of hiring brand new, inexperienced RDs on the cheap. I once was brand new, too, and I support giving people a chance, but the hiring trend strongly favors young desperate RDs who will take a salary far below market value for positions that require advanced knowledge and experience. There is little mentorship for these RDs. They hit the ground running, overworked, overwhelmed, and grossly underpaid.
Relationships with Management
I have been lucky to have kind managers who are good people. They have been approachable and understanding when personal and family needs arise. However, they also have been ineffective in small to large matters. Some remain removed from their subordinates’ jobs, and this lack of basic understanding (and lack of desire to achieve it) disables them in helping staff solve problems. They will try to help in good faith but tend to rest their authority to do so more on their job titles than on a thorough grasp of the problem and the end goal. I have felt discouraged from eliciting support from management for fear of making matters more complicated or for fear of damaging relationships I have built with professionals outside Morrison. The latter occurs via communications management will have “on my behalf”, without me or my knowledge, that miss the mark. I have also felt blamed for my own workload, disregarded as a boundary-setting failure of mine rather than a fundamental structural issue. I feel appreciated but not respected.
