Pros
New owners, Peter J & Corinna bring a fresh eyes & since they grew up with the Values based culture they truly believe in it from top to bottom. Excellent self-development tools - classes are there as long as you take the initiative to take them..career mentoring available to all Many good hearted folks that are truly trying to do a good job with sometimes limited resources and antiquated computer systems room for growth is there until you run into the glass ceiling at mid management family atmosphere with a few bad eggs The Holt family is heavily involved in the community & charities..and all employees are encouraged to participate. Customer focused - you can't do wrong by taking care of the customers - everything else will follow Lots of work to do positive changes coming (just long overdue & slow to change)
Cons
Behind the curve on technology for the backoffice - and thats by choice -- i've never seen anything quite like it in my career- lack of overall vision drives many areas to develop silos/pockets of folks often doing similar job roles but in different areas... without the benefit of being able to help each other new owners have 9 prong approach & this seems to filter down to their direct reports..the problem is, some of those direct reports are stuck & "think" they follow the VBL culture..but its pretty obvious that most of them are giving lip service & seem more concerned with their own bonuses then growing their employees & thinking of the future. Perhaps the occasional rift that happens scares them into making sure that they are the only ones who know something. Not sure. but many, many processes go undocumented and there is a huge knowledge gap if an employee leaves. Pay is lower but if you live on the southside, the lack of having to commute into northside traffic certainly makes up for it. Pay scales are not reevaluated based on market regularly. In fact, 3 percent raise or less is pretty standard...with the understanding that the yearly review apparently has no bearing on the raise which is the craziest thing I've ever heard. Raises are apparently set in the budget in december so if your having a good year or bad year, don't expect it to be reflected in your raise. As mentioned, most employees are like family with a few bad eggs...the problem is because of the Values Based Leadership - they have a really hard time getting rid of the bad eggs as Holt feels like they really need to keep working on these folks to get better. They need to learn a bad employee has a time frame & sometime its just time to call it quits before the culture itself is damaged as mentioned lots of work to do - a problem with prioritization often leads projects to become hot & cold as priorities seem to change o a whim - reactive instead of proactive