A Company Trying to be New School with Old School Toxicity
Pros
There's hybrid flexibility for most roles. I would say the pay is decent. Work-life balance is ok to a point. There is some attempt at employee engagement but I did not see a lot in my time there.
Cons
There was a major focus on production for my role, which was not clearly defined as a production role when I agreed to the position. Loans reviewed per hour are heavily scrutinized by management in order to maximize employee productivity. Failing to hit a certain number per hour meant that an employee would be reprimanded for productivity. The department's ultimate goal is to have a team of 2 to 3 employees do as much as possible within a workday, rather than employing the appropriate number of employees to handle the workload. The end result is employees become micromanaged to ensure that a rigid production schedule is met that isn't necessary and can be obtained by other means. When the workload is very heavy, other departments are often recruited to help disposition files. As one may have guessed, the end result is that many arbitrary errors are found when the files are reviewed. There is no consistency about what the job is meant to be or how day-to-day processes should be conducted between frontline employees, middle management, and top management. Front-line specialists may have. completely different understanding of how certain scenarios should be handled than management. Because of this, new employees may become frustrated or confused because of the different answers that may receive when asking questions. Management lacks actual managerial skills and many are in leadership roles due to being high producers in their past positions. This is a common trope within the mortgage industry, and it would even seem like an appropriate idea if managers were expected to produce just as their subordinates are. However, this is not the case. Managers in this department are strictly salaried supervisors and their expectations are to lead, coach, and give feedback. Since they were promoted for past production and not their potential to motivate and influence employees, they lack the necessary skills to accomplish their intended goal. The end result is that there is a hyper-fixation on production with little to no feedback detailing how to improve or a realistic view that some days production can vary. Essentially middle management views their position as literal micromanagement, leading to a toxic work culture. From personal experience, not only was my hourly production monitored closely, but my emails were monitored by management to ensure screenshots looked appropriate. There are also times when I was reprimanded for not answering an email quickly enough, even when the email had been received within 30 minutes and not marked as urgent. Not only is severe micromanagement an issue, but some managers have no way to conduct themselves in the office. My manager made a habit of frequent inappropriate remarks/stories. These ranged from stories of drug use to a remark made regarding a physical I had requested PTO for.