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First, I want to thank you for taking the time to write a review. I would like the opportunity to respond with more information and to request further action on your part to help us improve our team.
I fully understand and agree that good and affordable employee health insurance is very important. As you can see on some of the other reviews, this was one of the larger concerns employees had over the past couple of years. We recently convened our corporate leadership meeting for 2016 and the biggest win in my opinion was the upcoming changes in 2017 for benefits. Employees on the AFSOC ISR PED contract will see a significant improvement in the coverage and affordability of the healthcare benefits. Those that are currently enrolled will see a very large increase in their take home pay by comparison. Additionally, employees will see an increase in their paid personal time off and be introduced to a new accrual system that increases over time with the company.
Regarding your comment about holidays and the 12.5 hour shifts, there is nothing we can do about the condensed work schedule. As you stated earlier it is a trade-off with the amount of days off you get in a pay period. Contracts must meet man-hour requirements and if holidays could account for 12.5 hour shifts than there would be an accounting issue. It is your choice whether or not to take the remaining 4.5 hours through a half holiday or paid time off, or not get paid for that time when taking the day off. We have several built in ways to mitigate employee impact, and if you are not tracking this, I suggest you talk to your supervisor to learn how. You have to admit the floating holiday policy is pretty nice where you still get a holiday to use even if your work schedule has you off on the actual day of the holiday.
Next I would like to address our policy of promoting from within. You stated that we "force you to start as a lower level analyst", however we make it abundantly clear during our technical interviews that we have a promotion from within policy where we will promote those that meet higher level requirements from within before externally hiring someone to fill the position. Failing to do that, I would guess that we would have many other negative reviews on employees being demotivated by being passed over for promotion. We have not forced anyone to take a job with us, and we have been more than transparent with any applicants on the benefits and promotion policies a prospective employee may come into. If you accepted an offer you did so knowing these things. Those that put in their time and meet the requirements will get promoted when the opportunity arises, I promise.
Anytime an employee is promoted to a new analyst level, or takes on more responsibility as a supervisor, we provide them additional compensation commensurate with the change. Additionally we utilize several recognition programs to provide monetary awards to include gift cards, out of cycle pay raises and bonuses. If you do not see this I would like the opportunity to talk to you and discuss our programs and how they may be improved.
I am deeply concerned with your comments that there is "No accountability for anything that goes on in the office" and that there are "Constant racial slurs and discrimination... [a] toxic work environment". Zel Technoloiges LLC has a zero tolerance policy regarding discrimination and harassment and if you see or are experiencing such behavior please bring it to our attention immediately. If you are not comfortable utilizing our chain of command I welcome you to come to me directly. Also, we have other anonymous methods to report this activity and I urge you to take whatever opportunity you are comfortable with to do so immediately. The Ethics Hotline is (877) 722-9797, the Director of HR can be reached at 1-757-325-1325 and you may contact me at 1-850-813-6720.
Again I thank you for the time you took to post a review. I hope the information I provided is helpful to you, and that you help me improve your work environment for both yourself and the rest of the team.
Respectfully,
Christopher A. Brewer
ZelTech - Director of ISR Programs
christopher.brewer@zeltech.com
850-613-6720
