Production and Traffic Manager - Production Manager KDHX Employee Review

Some of the benefits are fantastic. The health insurance is not great, but whatever it does not cover can be reimbursed with an HRA that matches the exact amount of the high deductible. You just have to take the time to submit your claims, but they were all paid out. Dental and vision were excellent and covered all of my copays. Six hour work days with flexible working hours. All employees are salaried and the management is too busy working on important projects to keep track of office attendance. In my experience, most office work takes about 3 hours maximum to complete, so I think this saves them money on supplies/utilities. You are expected to work extra hours if that is what is needed to get the work done. They care more about results than appearances. There is a work from home option since the pandemic. A year or two ago, they started asking us to come into the office at least one or two days a week (depending on our role), just to make sure the building hasn't blown up. You get your own MacBook that you are actually allowed to use for personal use as well, so that is another great benefit. Communication on Slack in and out of the office is efficient. Meetings/conversations can be held on Zoom or in person. It's a small staff, so it doesn't take much time to schedule appointments with the appropriate person, or figure out who should be handling a task. No dress code, which is again excellent because it gives you more time to focus on results. You can dress up if that's more your style, wear t-shirts and jeans every day, or do something in between. Unlimited PTO offered with manager approval. The managers are very laid back and understanding and will often approve your PTO. I think it's with the expectation that you will be keeping up with your work. If you're out for more than one week, you're expected to organize with your colleagues to make sure your tasks are covered and report the results to your manager ahead of time. This can be stressful, but it also means that every week is different. I signed on to be a bookkeeper, but I also learned a lot about facilities issues, radio traffic scheduling, and online store management while I was there. After a couple of years on the job, I kind of stopped picking up new duties, but they are still flexible to change. Everyone in the office is really nice! They are some of the nicest people I have ever worked with. Cost of living raises are offered annually. This means that my salary went up $12,000 in six years - and my salary was pretty good for me at the time that I started. They really put their staff first since they are the people that keep the business running. The pay would be low anywhere else, but is pretty good for Missouri. Location is great if you live in the city. Commute was only 10-20 minutes depending on traffic, but again, they don't track your arrival/departure times very closely. You're free to eat/take breaks whenever you want, since you are salaried. Breaks and a relaxed work style are encouraged to prevent burnout. I wish I could work here forever, but I need to advance my career and learn some new skills since I am still young.

The parking situation is not very good. They only have a small parking lot with about 6 spots. Two spots need to be reserved for on-air programmers so that they can get in and out of the building quickly. One spot now needs to be reserved for the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, who run a bar/music venue out of part of the space. This means that if multiple employees are there at the same time, some people might have to park a few blocks away on Samuel Shephard Drive. This can mean it takes an extra five minutes or so to get into the office, which is stressful when you have an appointment. It can also be frustrating during cold or hot weather. Finally, some employees have had their cars broken into, or received parking tickets. The traffic is awful on Washington Avenue and sometimes it can take a long time to get in and out of the parking lot. People who do not work or volunteer here also park in our parking lot because they are downtown to see a show or musical, and they get frustrated at the lack of affordable parking options. We tried to alleviate this by installing a parking gate, but it was destroyed by a semi-truck during Music at the Intersection. The building was built around 1920 and the previous management cut many corners when moving the business from its old location into the new building. She didn't budget for the entire move, instead tackling renovations one floor at a time. This resulted in things like the fourth floor not having a full ceiling to this day. The roof and many of the HVAC systems were installed incorrectly by cheap contractors, and this has resulted in long-term, expensive, recurring issues. It was my job to diagnose building issues and get them repaired, but oftentimes the budget just wasn't there for the repairs we needed (or for other general improvements to the office). Some of the contractors we already had as contacts were cheap and low quality, but we eventually replaced them after a few years of recurring issues with no long term solutions. You are required to outline your weekly tasks with a weekly review/preview report. This helps to keep your manager up to date with what you are working on. It's a nice idea, but sometimes there were not many projects to work on when money was tight, so you would find yourself filling it with nonsense. It can help you come up with ideas for extra work to do, but some weeks it's just going to be business as usual. I would make this monthly or bi-weekly, to be honest. I can see why the current leadership is more detail oriented given that previous leadership was completely disorganized and got us into a lot of debt. The financial situation is very stressful. I was furloughed once and should have found a new job then, but my furlough only lasted two weeks. I did go on to learn a lot more and take on more responsibilities after that. For two years, the finances were looking fantastic. But lately, it's been on a downturn again, looking like it did when I first started. That is part of the reason I decided to move on, because I need financial stability in my life. Finally, there is a lot of hate directed at this organization from the public, who have been deliberately misinformed by competing news organizations who have a vested interest in KDHX going out of business. If they knew the complete story, they would be on the station's side, but the articles that have been released are full of falsehoods and omissions. Not that it matters, because most people develop their entire thesis based on the headlines alone. My parents both worked in media, so normally I can brush this kind of thing off, but it's really infuriating when I saw people that once claimed to be my friends leaving negative comments on my workplace's posts. They know that I work there and could have asked me what was really going on, but they chose not to. It's affected my mental health to the point that I'd like to move out of Missouri completely because the culture is so dishonest. There were also strangers who yelled at me at bars when I used to work there. The organization should have done a better job at telling their side of the story. When they knew that disgruntled ex-employees (half of whom actually quit) were going to go to the media, they should have gotten ahead of it with a positive story framing their side. If they didn't have time for that, they could have told their side of the story much more transparently. They were afraid to tell the truth of what happened because they didn't want to hurt ex-employees' feelings, but telling the complete truth would actually make them look much better than making conservative PR statements. When you are in the right, you are allowed to tell the truth. They also don't know how to effectively manipulate the unintelligent people who repeatedly leave comments on social media. If it were me, I would honestly take a stronger and more antagonistic approach to command respect, instead of dancing around the issue of them getting harassed every single day. However, nobody at the organization has a background in public relations or media, and many media consultancies in this city are very weak. It's not the staff's fault that they don't have this training. The station is very understaffed and needs several more employees to not just do public relations, but IT, logistics, programming, and other work. Unfortunately, the money is just not there unless the public decides to support the station again instead of trying to tear it down and replace it. ALL of the station's issues are money issues, and many of these money issues go back to when they moved to a new building. The public thinks that the "leadership" needs to be replaced, but they think that the organization is being unnecessarily stubborn by not giving into their logical demand. They do not understand that the leadership cannot be replaced because the leadership did not do anything wrong. Also, there is nobody talented enough in this city who would be willing to lead the station in their place. So this station is at a standstill. Fortunately, they are doing a decent job at starting to build a new, wider audience than what they had before, and the previous audience may eventually forget what the controversy even was once they've consumed enough alcohol.

volunteer Dj's are a great team and most have no idea what goes on behind the curtain.

Top Management is unprofessional, mocks other people/groups, is degrading and manipulative and dishonest. Big wage gap between CEO and others. Turnover is incredible, no one stays long, most are fired when they make waves or question things that look shady. And a lot looks shady. After losing 10 our of 14 employees in two years, maybe it's time to think about whether the people at the top are hiring the wrong people, or the wrong people are at the top. Board members are buddies of management so they don't do oversight. Management just keeps getting private donors to bail them out and spending more and more money.