*Pay. The front line staff does backbreaking work and are underpaid. They are like slaves to rich people who are the virtually only folks who can afford to live there. Most of the front-line staff are immigrants and minorities making minimum wage. Sunrise actually encourages managers to hire non-credentialed staff so you can justify paying them less. And middle managers at the community are underpaid as well and work long hours for what equates to minimum wage when you break it down by the hours worked.
*Quality and training. Staff should be credentialed. Instead of hiring CNAs and GNAs, sunrise encourages communities to hire non credentialed staff so that we can justify paying them less. They know that those who have credentials will not stay. Sunrise's training is inadequate and the communities follow the training program sporadically and there is absolutely no oversight on this process. Sunrise takes a wait and see approach: they do the absolute minimum to avoid trouble with the law and the communities do not have the resources to support training properly. As a community worker, these are stressful conditions to work under.
The training of the management staff is also inadequate. They toss you into your job and you basically have to teach yourself. The questions from staff begin coming immediately and no one cares if you know how to do your job yet. The program Sunrise has in place is actually laughable and sad. The best companies, spend months with you, training you and getting you onboard. Sunrise gives you a buddy that you spend three days with when you can manage to get away from your already chaotic community. The corporate training is weak and is taught once with no followup later on and managers simply don't have enough tools to be able to function properly in a 21st century work environment.
*Company is all about money: Make no mistake here. Sunrise is like every other for-profit company that needs to maximize their profits. They splatter pictures of seniors on their marketing material and have created a mission statement and other documents that say we care about seniors and our team members but Sunrise only cares about money. They cut community staff to the bare minimum and work the poor staff to death. They hire the least qualified people and pay them minim wage and have created a weak program to train the the teams. I once heard a corporate executive say "you can talk about the residents all you want, but this is about money." And it shows once you are on the inside.
*The Corporate office vs. Communities: The corporate office is supposed to support the communities but in reality, its the communities who toil day-in-and-day-out to generate the move-ins that compensate the corporate staff who are overpaid, incompetent, and so few in number that you have to wait weeks to get a return all or email if you are lucky enough to get one at all. These corporate people party and goof off instead of supporting the communities. When the corporate staff comes to your community, they expect special treatment and want you to go out of your way to accommodate them on very short notice. They show no respect for the communities' time and resources. Also, Sunrise is mired in so much red tape that it has become an inefficient machine incapable of timely responding to issues.
The general sentiment among the communities is that the left had knows not what the right hand is doing and the support staff is aloof and clueless about how the communities work, their needs, and how to best support them, which is why the support staff receive a lukewarm welcome when they do visit communities.
*Unionization: Sunrise is trying very hard to prevent any unionization of their communities because a union would destroy their ability to exploit the folks who can least afford to advocate for themselves - the front-line staff. In my opinion, the staff should organize because they would have better pay and would have more leverage over an exploitative system, management team, and corporate management team.
*Community workers are dispensable. The communities are workhorses for the corporate office. This business model exploits the folks who do the hard work of bringing in the business and the money and provide massive perks and benefits to the highly valued corporate staff who have inflated salaries. People are fired at the communicate all the time especially when they point out problems and unethical matters to the corporate staff. You cant trust the corporate management team. They are unethical will lie. cheat, and deceive in order to protect their bottom line. And as a community worker bee, you are expected to fall in line and overlook unethical practices and do what you are told, or else you will be fired.
*Depending on the community you work for, you may encounter residents that are mean and abusive to the employees and management. If you work in a community like this, the corporate office and the regional management staff will not help you. If money is on the line, you will have to tolerate this behavior.
*Benefits. Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of Sunrise, a health care company, is their benefits package. As if it were not enough to be paid crumbs, the benefits are so poor and inaccessible that it is appalling. So much of the front-line and community staff is already on public health benefits because their income is so low that they cant afford the insurance. But if you can manage to afford their exorbitant rates for health insurance the deductibles will bankrupt you.
Sunrise provides 2K of tuition reimbursement per year, but very few people at the community can even take advantage of this because Sunrise only provides this benefit to people seeking a 4-year degree in the healthcare field. So someone trying to better themselves by taking classes or obtaining a certification in a field like IT or trying to obtain a CNA or GNA would be denied.
Sunrise generally strikes me as a company that is disorganized and fractured by the classist divisions created within the company. There is a lack of regard for the folks who do the hard work in the communities and a general sentiment that the company will drive profits at the expense of humane and ethical treatment of its employees. I was so thrilled to be working for this company at first but them I just felt let down because the pervasiveness of unfair and unethical behavior. I have not even listed half the awful things I've seen and witnessed.
Stay away from this company or if you decide to work here, let it be a leg up to better things.
