Imagine This: Nationwide Layoffs and Demotions
Pros
- health insurance is decent. - automatic contributions to 401k begin a year after employment. I think that there is a match up to 2.5%, but the company matches your contribution at a ratio of 1:2. - you can get a discounted gym membership for like $85 per month. - former pros that no longer exist include: stock bonus; professional development toward a breadth of substantive skills; a sense of autonomy in the workplace.
Cons
Every decision at this company is made from the top-down at a 90 degree angle. To demote your entire admin staff nationwide from General Managers and Assistant General Managers to "Resident Experience Managers" and etc., all within a single day, is beyond insulting. They didn't even ask for our input, as if this doesn't directly affect all of our lives. Why did I take this job? To do a whole lot of things: budgets, marketing analytics, facilities/maintenance, coordinating capital expenditures and large projects -- the interesting stuff. Now all of that has been stripped and General Managers across the country are left with: residents yelling at you, and building turnover (when residents yell at you with their parents). Because of the sudden change in title and responsibilities, I can't even say that I manage a building or property anymore. I now only manage an "Experience." The massive change in responsibilities is jarring, but the required change in title is completely insulting. If this is to be just a customer service job, then it shouldn't be FLSA-exempt, and I should be permitted to work 40 hours per week instead of the 50-60 weekly hours that I constantly do outside of turnover without additional pay. And when it's turnover season, I always do 100+ hours per week -- with 0% pay beyond my normal salary. Now all or most of this time will go toward Customer Service, which is when: I assert corporate's policy to the resident and their angry parents; they complain to the corporate office; the corporate office decides to disregard policy; I am stuck being around this resident and their angry parents for 1+ years because I was the bad guy who asserted corporate's (ineffective) policy and the resident obviously lives where I work; rinse and repeat because residents are encouraged to defy policy. Yet, I'm to be fired if I don't uphold policy. Our office has been constantly short-staffed to begin with, and by ACC's design. If someone leaves, they retroactively designate the role as "redundant." On top of this, they keep cutting roles from each property, as though these roles were never there for a reason in the first place. It would be different if these positions were instead being automated, but they're not, and corporate is just putting a heavier workload on their employees' shoulders year after year at the property level without a corresponding increase in pay. Eventually, the old employees leave, and everyone in the office is new enough that they think these brutal working standards are the norm. Your salary goes up a MAXIMUM of 3% a year, based on your performance, where there are no KPIs and no rubric and everything is weighted on a discretionary basis (i.e. does your boss like you?). 3% doesn't even keep up with inflation; why am I being paid less after performing well? Meanwhile at the corporate office, everyone works half-days on Fridays and they don't come in to cover shifts or do grunt work on the weekends. In my experience, half of the corporate staff I've spoken with are rude and two-faced if not outright malicious. Ironically they're called our "Corporate Support" team. Every task that I enjoyed in my day-to-day has been taken from me, and all that's left is "Customer Service." If I wanted to work a Customer Service-specific job, I would never have agreed to be FLSA-exempt. Now, I'm still expected to work more than 40 hours per week, but these hours have to be spent doing uninteresting things that will leave me with no skills to take elsewhere. I might as well manage fast food and work a clean 40 with possible OT instead. Even if I ignore how my daily tasks have changed, what feels the most like being stabbed in the back is the change in core responsibilities, and how this affects my ability to work anywhere else (especially since I no longer feel that I can continue working at ACC). The longer I stay at ACC now, the less claim I have to any marketable or portable skills. A year from now, how could I realistically claim to be able to forecast budgets or explain variances, on my resume or in an interview? All that I'd be able to claim is one bullet-point: "Customer Service experience." This is completely underhanded, considering that the theme at 2024's annual conference was something to the effect of "grow with us." The corporate office harps at us constantly about doing X or Y task for our or our staff's professional development, and then they turn around and demote the admin staff that weren't laid off -- nationwide, on a single day, and without any notice. There is no potential for growth, and it seems clear now that this has all been a ruse for ACC to trap its employees and boost employee retention in order to cut costs. The GMs or "Resident Experience Managers" who don't leave now will be trapped, because no other employer will see them as having valuable skills. The ones who don't leave now will also be stuck doing twice the workload, because the corporate office will consider the roles of those who've left to have been redundant after the fact. I'm being forced to decide between staying and losing any real claim I have to substantive skills while instead focusing each day on Customer Service and the "Resident Experience," or leaving. ig you win, ACC. hope you enjoy the reduced labor cost and I'm sorry you wasted so much of my time.
