Pros
On the whole, Freeman is a good company to work for. Good work environment. Lots of opportunity to travel. PTO is respected -- no calls or "can you just answer this really quickly..." type emails. Recently rolled out more paid maternity/paternity leave. Freeman has cultivated a family friendly environment. A number of programs to acknowledge/recognize each other's hard work. Good benefits. They just changed the benefits waiting period from 90 days to 30 days for full access to benefits for new full time employees. It seems to be the luck of the draw on management. I'm fortunate that my immediate supervisor and their supervisor are good managers and great people. Though as I look outside my department, I see where there are examples of break down in communication and not so effective management, sometimes a complete lack of management. Freeman is so large that it is difficult to give an "overall" impression because every person's experience is so personal. I enjoy the projects I get to work on and because I am hourly, for the most part I do find myself to be compensated for my time. It's evident that everyone's end goal is to have successful shows and happy clients. There is a lot of resources and support to get the job done. How each person gets to that end goal can be very different so you have to find like minded people. Overall, the company is trying hard to make changes that encourage new people to stay.
Cons
There is a "One Freeman" approach that clients are sold on and then their experience on-site can be a bit of a nightmare -- not just for them but for the Freeman team as well. The different Freeman companies become very separate and difficult to maneuver -- there are SOPs for some things that are very loosely interpreted and frequently just non existent. Management doesn't get to see how unprofessional Freeman as a whole looks on site and only hears about it when on-site people are venting about it -- it is a huge problem that seems like only on-site people are directly experiencing it. The unclear connection between all the Freeman companies makes work difficult to complete and difficult to keep our best foot forward with clients. There isn't a clear next step for me in my career at Freeman to work toward. My onboarding was, from what I have heard, better than most. However, I have to give credit directly to my immediate management team -- Again, I've seen how other new employees are left to fend for themselves. Working with different branches is difficult because each branch does "what they've always done, its always been this way". Shows that are done every year fall into a rut and end up on autopilot for the teams that works on them.