Missing many formal processes under the guise of "we're too small of a company for that...". Had I known this about the culture there I would have never accepted the job.
HR: Didn't meet with anyone from HR until they need to get a bunch paperwork done after being employed their nearly a month! We new hires were called into the HR office at 11:30AM was given a stack of paperwork (besides the expected work identification, W-2, IRS-1099 forms, was given a 60page Health insurance book with a form that wanted details of prior coverages and policy numbers, 401K and a variety of dental and vision plans booklets with a myriad of options to select from) and asked if I could fill them out during lunch because it was already the end of the month and if we missed the deadline of end of that day we would be ineligible until the next annual open enrollment for insurance.
Training process: New hire training process is basically one of the support staff assigned to do training with no formal education beyond high school. Although very personable and knowledgeable about the company products, the trainer was highly unprofessional as far creating a cohesive training syllabus.
IT Staff: It took over a month to even get access to a computer with email and even them most of the vital online tools for doing the job were still not accessible due to permissions not being setup yet. We were expected to handle taking live calls without but a couple of hours access to some of the vital online tools! I was informed by my new hire trainer the IT staff doesn't want to be bothered with setting up a computer or email access for new employees during training. Supposedly because they are not sure if you are not committed to the company you might quit during training and this would be a waste of the IT departments time (in hindsight this might be from their previous record of handling new hires so poorly). The trainer for the support department resorted to scrounging for decommissioned computers so that the new employees would at least have access to some but not all of the web based tools we were being trained on (no email or knowledge base access until the last week of training?).
Peer to Peer: The customer support department is mostly males in their early to mid-twenty's. As such my impression was that because they don't particularly have a lot of experience save for this place they feel that anyone new has to pay their dues and learn the same way they did when there was no training offered save for learning by the seat of their pants and over time, yet diametrically opposite to that attitude, new hires are expected to be at the same competence level in 4 weeks. Also, there is a bit of frat boy culture as I noticed that the support team never at lunch in the assigned lunch room (occupied mostly by the predominantly female sales staff) but instead had meals and breaks in the training room (even when it was being used).
