Major Improvements are Needed - Associate RAND Engineering & Architecture Employee Review

Thank you for your candid feedback. One of our post-pandemic changes was offering a hybrid schedule to ensure continued life/work balance, which we hope makes life a bit easier for our employees. We appreciate you pointing it out. We have always felt we foster a culture of camaraderie, and I am truly sorry if you did not feel that our employees are not friendly, or that there are special relationships that allow some employees to break our policies. To be honest, this is not feedback we hear often, if at all, but will certainly take it into advisement. As for our HR team, there is a total of over 26 years of experience, and by virtue of our positions, must be close to management as any HR team would be within a company. Many of our policies, decisions, and day-to-day tasks are in tandem with management. It is difficult for outside HR departments to successfully work within an established firm as they have no idea of the company culture, policies, goals, mission, etc. Without that internal knowledge, it would be hard for any HR team to be successful. As for team leaders, we believe in transparency, and never hesitate to ensure our team leaders are receiving the feedback needed to be successful. We also have an open-door policy and any team member has direct access to our President and all of the management to discuss any issues. There can always be an improvement in communication with employees, and certainly, the pandemic had an impact as for the first time in almost 33 years we were a remote company. That being said, we have a weekly all-staff meeting, weekly team meetings, yearly reviews, 1, 3, 6, and 9-month check-ins for new employees, and all of our team leaders are in the office and accessible to all of their team members. Now that we are mostly back in the office, we are bringing back our team activities, including yoga, Pilates, movie nights, documentary lunches, summer/holiday parties, happy hours, etc. At the end of the day, RAND may not be a perfect fit for everyone, but we do take all of the feedback to heart, and appreciate anyone taking the time to share their experiences so we can make sure we are meeting all of our employees needs to the best of our ability.