It's a Job, Not a Career - Anonymous employee BerkOne Employee Review

- Low base pay/difficult to support oneself independently just on this salary. - Little if any Interdepartmental communication (you never get to know the other departments or understand what they do, and interdepartmental relationships are not promoted or encouraged). - The incentive program in the Imaging Department fostered animosity among coworkers and created an us-versus-them mentality across shifts. Some people did really well and received large bonuses, while others didn't do well and were never able to achieve the bonus. You need that bonus to support yourself because the pay is so poor. If we as a department were able to exceed the standard consistently, it would increase, and you would need to continue to burn yourself out to continue to maintain that same level of performance. If you weren't able to meet the department's standard before, your prospect of making it in the future was slim to none. Also, errors reduced your bonus amount, so these became almost traumatizing for some people. - Errors/Audits were not always handled in an unbiased manner. Animosity between coworkers--sometimes it was just pettiness in general--created an environment where people actually took joy in reporting and recording errors against their colleagues. Some people actively looked for errors throughout their shifts, and this kind of thing was encouraged by higher management. While I think that it's important to report and record errors, I do not find satisfaction in it. Rather, I see audits/errors/mistakes as learning opportunities for workers to perform their jobs better and more accurately. During my time with the company, there was absolutely nothing positive about the way errors were reported or shared with employees. If you are very sensitive about your mistakes or self-conscious, please do not consider full-time employment here. I have seen this make people sick with stress. - Poor communication between shifts within the same department. There were many times when myself and others were trained to handle a client's work in a certain way. However, within 24 hours, we'd find that we had received errors for doing something incorrectly (sometimes, if a coworker on another shift liked you enough to not report the error, they would help you by giving you feedback, so you could do the job correctly). The way these instances were handled just caused such confusion and resentment among employees. - Poor communication with process updates and changes (In one day, we received an update about how to handle a client's work, and reviewed our SOP for that job. Within 4 hours, that process had been updated, and several of us received errors because we didn't know to re-check the SOP for these recent updates. This is just one incident). - Management has favorites, and it impacts your career growth. There is very little possibility for any meaningful growth here unless you become buddies with someone in higher management. Working hard and being intelligent is not nearly as valued as your relationship with upper management. I saw so many great coworkers who had demonstrated their skills and talents in training, leadership, process management, adaptability, dependability, but if upper management did not like them as individuals, they would not be able to move anywhere within the department. The best you can hope for is their new system of Processor level 1, 2, or 3 and Operator 1, 2, or 3. These were created especially for the Imaging Department in order to give workers the illusion that there is actual opportunity for growth. - If work is too low, they institute a mandatory unpaid time off work schedule. This means they select at least 1 day per week, and you are not permitted to come in to work. You do not get paid for these days, which is problematic if you rely on your paycheck for food, rent/mortgage, gas, and other necessities. - Disconnect between upper management and employees. It was just very disappointing and demoralizing to see that my department's management team did not want anything to do with us and saw us as a miserable antagonistic force. Whenever there was a disagreement between different shifts, they went with the solution that would make everyone unhappy instead of seeking a solution or taking sides. To give a sense of what our leadership was like: While I was there, the department's supervisor didn't even want to be in the department with us and was pushing for his own office away from us, and within the last year, the Imaging Department's managers moved into a separate building which makes it very difficult to relate to your workforce. - Micromanaging at a distance. While upper management may have remained physically distant, their micromanaging only served to exacerbate the tension and frustration of the "us and them" mentality. It is difficult to work in a micromanaged environment, and even more so when your managers are never actually around or performing the work with you. - Very little employee engagement activities (potlucks/food days were completely discontinued because it took away from productivity), and speaking with your coworkers for longer than a few moments is discouraged because it takes away from productivity. - Gossip, drama, and demoralizing employee behavior. As a result of the micromanaging and very few opportunities for employee engagement, one of the ways worker dissatisfaction has manifested is in the form of high-school-like pettiness (coworkers who were friendly one day, are suddenly refusing to speak to each other the next; rumors about what someone supposedly said to another person at work; and other types of interpersonal drama to get you riled up). - The CEO seemed disconnected and didn't know how to interact with employees. His advice to us about how we should handle days when were unable to get to work because of snow and ice was to buy an SUV.