Overall good place to work. - Project Professional EarthCon Consultants Employee Review

I wanted to address the advice you gave us on mentoring and social media. Mentoring is an area where we can always improve. We have a very well defined career path for technical, administration and leadership positions but I still don't think we do enough to communicate that to employees. In particular, each employee in their annual performance review should go over where they are in their career, which position they aspire to and the development of those skills and experience that will get you there. As to social media, we have been far more active in this area with the work that Shannon Scott has been doing. However, we rely on our employees to share good news with her so she can post it. Finally, we are in the process of "blowing up" our current website and hope to roll out the new site some time this year. I am very excited about this initiative and if employees have suggestions we would love to hear from you. Contact Shannon and let her know what you are thinking.

As CEO of EarthCon Consultants I take very seriously the concerns expressed in this review and acknowledge that in the past we did not have formal training programs that addressed the needs of our younger employees. We heard this concern and selected a very senior member of our leadership team to focus on a training platform called EarthCon University (ECU), with coursework designed to provide valuable training to our younger employees so they can advance in their career, diversify their experience, add more value to our clients, and in turn, realize higher levels of compensation. Since its inception, ECU has provided a variety of training programs that are directly relevant to newer, less experienced employees and their career development. The courses cover a wide range of project management, technical and regulatory topics, and are offered three times per year. Our latest trimester included an overview of analytical chemistry, basic project management and performance of Phase I ESA’s. During any particular trimester we have between 20 and 25 of our employees registered for ECU courses and the feedback on the subject matter and quality of the professors has been very positive. So we heard the concerns about the lack of training and we have invested significantly in ECU to address the issue and will continue to do so. I also wanted to take this opportunity to respond to the comment about our bonus program and current lack of a 401(k) contribution. With regard to the former, last year we revised our bonus program to take into account overall company performance and to give greater discretion to our Regional and Branch leaders to decide how bonus dollars are allocated. With our continued growth and improved economic performance, the leadership will continue to search for opportunities to improve and upgrade this program. With regard to the 401(k), while it is true we are currently not in a position to make this contribution, it remains our goal to implement one. Currently we are focused on reinvesting in the company to support our growth which we believe will result in the kind of economic performance that will support a contribution to our employee’s 401(k) plan. We are confident that with continued growth from our reinvestment in the company the opportunity to once again fund the 401(k) will be realized. We will continue offer very competitive compensation packages and strive to foster a family atmosphere for employees where teamwork and mutual success are celebrated. I very much appreciate the candor of this employee and the concerns that were expressed in the post. We pride ourselves on listening to grassroots feedback, and our challenge in the leadership is to respond appropriately to the needs of our greatest asset, our employees. No doubt there is more to be done, but we are determined to be the best place to work in our industry and realize that we need to be diligent every day to achieve that goal.