*****ATTENTION: DO NOT WORK HERE!!!!!!!***** - Behavioral Therapist Steps Therapy Employee Review

1.0
Jun 8, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The families and the children you are assigned to are wonderful. By understanding their home environment you get a better appreciation for the work you do for the family. I have been a therapist in the field for quite some time and the population you work with in San Francisco is very different than other areas. They are able to work around your class schedule. The main lady working in the office is so awesome. Her personality is positive, welcoming, and approachable.

Cons

********There are 4 consecutive positive reviews on this page that are CLEARLY written by the supervisors!******** I just put my 2 week notice in after stretching it for so long only because I loved my clients. 1. They don't train you enough and then they just throw you into the field expecting you to know how to do everything. 2. Program supervisors will tell the family they will be at certain sessions, but do not show up. Parents are constantly putting pressure on the behavioral therapists asking when and why the program supervisors aren't coming. Other times they will show up randomly at your sessions with out ANY notice (parents end up not happy about this because they were unable to make their place presentable). There was only one program supervisor that was always out and about at my sessions. All the others came to my session once and I never saw them again (except for company meetings/parties). 3. The company is mainly run by two women. They recently just hired a third BCBA for the young ones. I've learned so much from the main person who runs the company when she is out in the field. She does so much that she's always busy and has so many other clients that its hard for her to make her rounds to everybody. ***HIRE MORE PEOPLE LIKE HER TO HELP TRAIN IN THE FIELD*** 4. Let me personally tell you that one of the two women running the entire company is actually hurting the company. She is VERY unprofessional with therapists and does not reply to things when things are her fault and expects the therapists to still be flexible for her. A lot of my clients under her have complained a lot about her to me and its hard to hear from my clients when all I could do is sit there to listen to it. I can't back up my manager because I actually feel for my clients so I just sit there while my client vents to me about my boss. 3. Hourly pay is super low compared to a lot of other companies. They also do not pay you for metered parking. 4. They don't give you enough time to get from client to client considering San Francisco parking and traffic. 5. A lot of my clients' binders were not updated. They either had the same goals for a very long time or did not have enough data sheets.

Explore other reviews about Steps Therapy

5.0
Sep 30, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Paid and informal training in which you are able to step right in immediately. You are immediately placed with children and somewhat learn as you go.

Cons

Some cons are the hours. Sometimes there would be a large gap between sessions. It would be nice to get paid for the driving time as well as the break, but the gap would be hard sometimes

2.0
Aug 10, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The only pro are the kids. I've worked with so many kids I absolutely loved!

Cons

As others have stated stated, the hours and pay are the worst part of this job. Steps pays lower compared to other ABA companies in SF. They will give you a schedule where you often will have a 3-5 hour gaps unpaid. You might be working 6 hours, but end up having a 12 hour day because you have to be made available. The worst part about these gaps are when you are waiting around for the session and the family ends up cancelling an hour before! I know it's not Steps fault, but they should have a policy where families have to provide advance notice. Supervisors never inform you when they will show up during a session, and sometimes I went months, even a year without seeing a supervisor. I remember starting with a new client and the BT who was leaving introduced me to the family, and I didn't see my supervisor for six months! I also was assigned to a school case where I didn't see the supervisor the entire year! I have to wonder if that particular supervisor is billing for hours she's not even providing. The management team needs better training. I was at risk of losing my company health insurance because I wasn't meeting full-time hours, and HR literally blamed me for calling out sick too often when they were the ones who reduced my hours. I called them out on it and HR basically attacked me via email listing why it's my fault and not theirs.

1
avatar
Steps Therapy Response
9mo
Hi There! I do believe you are a former employee/RBT, and not a current employee/RBT, but we definitely want to respond to the points you made here. We do review the pay rates in the area, and try to remain competitive. Glassdoor indicates an average pay for behavior technicians at popular companies in San Francisco is in the range of $23-$29 per hour, and we are right in this range. I'm sorry you were not satisfied with your hourly rate. This is something that absolutely could have been brought to leadership at any of your Bi-Annual Reviews where we reviewed your performance, progress on goals, and pay rates in January and July of each year you were employed. In regard to supervisory visits, I wanted to outline a few things: 1. Our previous practice management software did not allow visibility into supervisory visits. The parents could see the supervisor visits on the calendar, but Behavior Technicians could not. We are happy to report that we have moved to a new system, and Behavior Technicians can see when supervisors are visiting weekly/monthly. This is something we are pretty excited about, and our current staff are as well. 2. I apologize about your experience with the supervisor you are mentioning. In the future, I recommend that you bring this up with leadership, so that it can be addressed directly with the employee. Providing consistent, and regular oversight of the cases is of the utmost importance to us. I can assure you that we would never submit a bill for a service that was not provided. For school cases, supervisors meet with teachers monthly, attend IEPs, and write progress reports, so those are all billable activities in which a supervisor may have provided a service, but was not directly with a Behavior Technician. 3. The sick time ordinance for San Francisco allows employees to accrue 1 hour for every 30 hours worked, and this caps at 72 hours. I believe in your situation you had exhausted the 72 hours of sick time, and were continuing to miss full days of work which then were unpaid. We do want to offer benefits to all employees who need it, but excessive absences definitely are a barrier to being able to provide consistent benefits. We are disappointed to hear that you felt attacked, but I can assure you that any communication from the company was simply to inform you of the situation at hand, so that you were aware the ramifications of such absences. I believe we also offered a medical leave, and that we were quite sensitive and understanding about the medical issues you were dealing with. Unfortunately, the health plans have rules about enrolled parties, and hours worked, so we were definitely trying to balance empathy, sensitivity and providing information on what could happen if hours dipped further. We appreciate your feedback about more training in professionalism. We will definitely take that into consideration, and add it to our on-going training series for supervisors and managers.
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