Company Leadership is weak, unengaged, and disorganized
Pros
- Working with an amazing team of VRS/Community interpreters was incredibly rewarding -Company provides up to $1,500 for full-time management that can go towards interpreting/business education or education debt. -Director colleagues were helpful, knowledgeable, and collaborative. - The company provides wonderful internal educational and training resources for interpreters.
Cons
- The company is owned by a private equity firm that is most focused on profits above all else. There have been numerous budget cuts, lacking, uncompetitive or nonexistent raises for both management and front-line interpreters, and layoffs in every single department that is not directly providing interpreting. - I was laid off. Severance pay was 1 week of pay for every year you'd worked with the company, which was insultingly low and not in line with industry standards. I know of several directors who hadn't even been with the company for a year who just didn't receive a severance. The layoffs weren't due to the fact that the company was unprofitable - rather, the company wasn't profitable enough for our private equity owners. - Company leadership stated that they were committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and wanted to support deaf and black and brown communities and their employees who were members of those groups. However, the company does not provide any ownership equity for employees, declining to put its money where its mouth is. - The C-suite head of HR knows nothing about the deaf community or deaf people and speaks down to women in meetings. - The health insurance is terrible - The company can only think as far ahead as next quarter, and makes decisions that are primarily financially motivated for the short-term. This is self-evident with how they've treated interpreter scheduling (full-time and part-time) with hours being cut severely until they needed more interpreters to cover hours and didn't have enough because the interpreters moved on to more consistent work.