Entertainment Earth

2.0

Jan 31, 2017

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

1. They allow you to make your own hours, as long as you put in eight hours a day. Some people come in 7am to leave early, other people don’t come in until 9/9:30am. 2. Sometimes they plan outings, like renting out a movie theatre. We saw Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman v Superman, and Captain America: Civil War among others. I don’t think they do that anymore though, to save money. 3. The products are cool, and so is the discount – even if they get stuff in later than other stores. 4. Most of the people (the entry level people) are awesome.

Cons

1. There's no real management here. The people who are in "upper management" either founded the company or have been there 10+ years, they aren't trained in what it means to manage a team. Every meeting (whether it's upper management only or with teams) is unproductive and usually accompanied by screaming, finger pointing, scolding... They think shouting is the way to motivate/inspire people. (And: The CEO and his brother, who’s the founder and President, don’t see eye to eye all the time. So you’ll get one of them saying one thing to you, but then get in trouble for doing it by the other.) 2. Their HR department is ineffective, but super nice. They know about problems within the company – the abrasive managers, conflicts between departments – but don’t do anything to remedy it. A big part of the problem is that the owners of the company allow their managers to treat each other and their employees with such disrespect that it becomes accepted by everyone, even HR. 3. The company is unwilling to adapt to changing times. They started a marketing department within the last two years informally, and built and fired half the department within 2016. They consider marketing to be “the hard sell,” and don’t listen to anything the marketing department suggested. Besides marketing, their website is not mobile-friendly, looks horrendous, and has been “in the works” for years. They don’t market-test anything, and instead go off of personal preference of the upper management. (If your customer doesn’t like something, it doesn’t matter if everyone at your company does.) They’re stuck in the past in every sense of the term. 4. They forcibly push their internal line of toys and collectibles (Bif Bang Pow) for employees to market/sell, but don’t do market-testing on the products before they make them and then hound employees as to why they haven’t “tried hard enough” to sell them. 5. I’ve said this a bit previously, but just to highlight how hostile this work environment is: There were multiple conflicts between my department and another department. Mediations didn’t work, it was all finger pointing, they would draft documents about everything we did wrong, call to scream at us on the phone, CC all upper management on emails complaining about us, try to get us fired… it was miserable. I would get so anxious before having to return to work on Monday that I’d get knots in my stomach and be unable to eat. I didn’t care about conflict or even losing my job, I was just miserable at having to deal with dozens of emails from people who would rather blame me for something they didn’t want to do themselves. If something went right, it was all because of them and their team was amazing; if something went wrong, it was my fault or my department’s fault and we were idiots. 6. The moral of the company employees is dismal. *I left for a job with significantly less pay.

Entertainment Earth Response

Management is absolutely present and accountable for meeting expectations and goals, and managing staff such as yourself. If you felt that at any particular given time you were not being managed in a way to help you achieve your goals, or our value of “Have Fun. Be Fun. Be Cool,” was not demonstrated, on behalf of the company, we apologize. However, it is imperative and we expect staff to communicate all concerns directly to their manager or Human Resources (if employees are uncomfortable approaching their direct report) to develop an action plan as a team, career goals and ensure an environment where an employee can thrive exists. Human Resources is always available to tackle any employee grievances. Meetings should not be a waste of time, and we encourage meeting organizers to have concise agendas with topics of discussion and action points for all meetings. Healthy discussions with ideas, thoughts, and opinions from all are welcomed and encouraged. Meetings provide a space to be innovative and brainstorm, and a platform for your voice to be heard. We also welcome and encourage employees to be smarter than we are, employees who will help take Entertainment Earth to the next level with clear, well-thought-out ideas. An idea, thought, or concept may not always come to fruition, but may create additional conversation or thoughts that lead in other directions. We will re-evaluate this current interactive forum versus a more strictly structured, less interactive meeting with clear, concise objectives directly from management, President, and CEO, to differentiate both and when to employ each for more productive results 1. I do want to touch on a few key words you mentioned: “Motivating and Inspiring people” - We absolutely believe in success through employees, training is a primary initiative. 2. We feel Human Resources is effective. A few milestones I can share: an onboarding training program; an employee recognition program; 90-day new hire touch points; a referral program; e-learning training implementation for all employees for the purpose of targeting soft skills; a grievance procedure; and a performance review process that includes managers… all within the past year. We would also like to share that Human Resources is implementing a “Core Values Committee” that will include employees at all levels and focus on improving our culture from the inside out. Our company is committed to making a positive impact through continuous improvement measures, which often comes about through feedback from current and past employees like you. 3. Our website is one of our top priorities. As you may be aware, the company began in a garage with a handful of employees and a homegrown website for various reasons. Our "mobile" is in the first build, and we have a team of developers to help meet launch date expectations. I've had the opportunity to view a sneak peek of our new website, and it looks amazing; we’re very excited. On the other side of the spectrum, a strategic restructure took place last year that will allow our company to focus on 2017 goals. The restructure affected marketing, among other departments. This was not a firing of staff. Rather, those affected were offered outplacement services to help support their job search, resume writing, and additional resources. 4. Our in-house brands are an important part of the Entertainment Earth family. Our marketing team is a valuable outlet to build the brand and promote our in-house products through social media, press, and such, so we do count on their expertise and resources to help increase sales and brand awareness. 5. As clearly stated in our handbook and our core values, an employee should never feel as though they work in a hostile environment. Human Resources conducts a complete investigation if/when any allegation is presented or even mentioned, and does not condone such behavior. 6. We appreciate your advice to management, and we will be sure to pass this feedback along. Thank you.

Ineffective management creates a hostile work environment - Anonymous employee Entertainment Earth Employee Review

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