At almost every phase that an employer could be critiqued on, PHMG missed the mark in the US.
Every business has shown their true colors as a result of COVID-19 this year. PHMG was exposed as a spin-zone, lie-spun company who gauged American workers during a pandemic.
Lets start with pay. In Chicago, the base salary offered for account managers was $35k/year. In other words, working as a cashier at a Chicago ALDI would be a more lucrative business move if you were looking for work.
When lockdown restrictions were enforced in Chicago, the US account management team was cut to ≈ 4-6 reps from ≈ 18-20.
All of the accounts which were previously held by the laid off reps were dispersed to the remaining reps (myself being one of them). Our pay was cut, and we were assured that their decision to keep us on was a gesture of their belief in us as long term assets to the company.
Being an opportunist (albeit a manipulated one), I saw this as a chance to go above and beyond my role and take on more responsibility. I was personally assured on several occasions (once days before my termination/layoff) that I had nothing to worry about, and my efforts would not go unnoticed.
Come June, PHMG laid off most of the remaining employees (myself included) working in the USA and simply boosted recruiting efforts in the UK for account management.
To put it simply, PHMG used and lied to US workers in order satisfy short term needs in account management only to migrate their full account management operations to the UK.
In retrospect, I should have been more in tune to some of the "red flags" which became almost implicit.
Management continually spoke of change and improvement to keep underpaid employees at bay and hungry. Little changed.
Technology was archaic. PHMG's unwillingness to invest in their support and technical capabilities was a symptom of their greed-plagued structure. Computers operated at a level that might have been deemed acceptable 20 years ago.
Clumsy in routine business matters. Poorly set expectations to employees and customers caused limitless headaches. Even the payroll was consistently an issue within my team. It was not payday unless someone felt shorted. One would think a company who boasts 35,000 customers worldwide could muster the competency to execute the payroll of a 200 employee office. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.
I don't see PHMG hiring operations personnel in the US anytime soon, but it needs to be known that if you work in support or account management in this company, you are nothing but an expense.
No person should work under that environment.
Along with the insulting pay, management constantly forced impossible work loads onto top performers to make sure they are squeezing every bit of value they can.
