- Extreme prejudice to people of colour and the LGBT community - Silence the voices of people of colour and the LGBT community - Employees are underpaid and over worked - Toxic work environment - Asked to lie to clients - lack of communication between departments Working for HomeStars was one of the most traumatic working experiences of my life. Coming fresh out of University I was promised to be apart of an inclusive and cohesive team, this wasn’t true. Management team acts like children, where they gossip and harass employees. I was one of the top sales people at the company and every time I would make a sale they would underhandedly give a sale to one of my white colleagues to undermine me. I experienced this for close to a year. I attempted to leave my department, fearing that the issue was solely in Sales. I was encouraged to join the Marketing Department by someone in management though by the end of the process I was told I was not a good fit to the department, which was made up of solely white employees. Instead they hired another internal candidate who they felt was a better fit to the department and used my credentials for that person in their welcome email to the entire company. When I brought this up (because I felt like me identity and accomplishments were stolen) I was told not to be upset about it and hopefully we could collab in the future. I was asked by The company for ways they could attract more women, especially women of colour and I openly explained that first, the toxic cis gendered male dominated sales department needed to change. I explained how uncomfortable a lot of the management team made me feel and how horribly they acted towards the women especially the black women in the company. A week later I was terminated without warning. In my exit interview I brought it up that I had asked to be moved to a different team and department in general due to being harassed and I was ignored and asked to exit the building. There are no Allies here, there is no diversity nor inclusion and I would know because I held a seat on the Diversity and Inclusion Board and they refused to take real action towards racist and homophobic members in the company. To this day they still use my photo on their site and in their marketing campaigns because to them, I’m just a Black face. HR is best friends with management. There is no trust nor anonymity. The culture is mortifying, they hire based on if they can imagine being friends with you. If it turns out that you just want to be present to do your job, skip socializing with them and participating in their toxic clique culture they isolate and harass you. At points I thought they were doing this in hopes that I quit, and once they realized that wasn’t going to happen they terminate me for ‘no cause’. I showed that I wanted to grow within the company by out preforming my peers and always volunteering to collaborate with other departments. Even with all of my promise there was no one trying to groom me for management positions, they were only trying to tear me down. If you’re looking for an organization that runs their business with integrity and makes their employees feel welcomed, then find somewhere else to work because this isn’t it. They no longer act with integrity, they no longer follow company values and they do not value the voices of people of colour or the LGBT community. At the end of the day this is not a company to work for, the experience will be traumatic and a waste. P.S - They've told people of colour “they speak great English” when these are born Canadians is disgusting and inappropriate.
