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      Social Nature

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      Social Nature reviews

      If you don't know what is broken, how can you fix it? - Anonymous employee Social Nature Employee Review

      3.0
      10 May 2021
      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Who doesn't want to work in the Natural Products space? - The mission of Social Nature and working in this great industry draws people into this company and is why many people stay for as long as they do. - The type of employees drawn to this industry are generally kind, passionate, and hard-working. - The non-business culture is really bottoms up at SN. Employees take the initiative to host weekly meditation, bring in a zero-waste recycling program, lunch and learns, or monthly fitness challenges. - The CEO will no doubt do everything in her power to ensure this company succeeds. Her top strength in the CliftonStrengths Assessment is Significance. Clifton Strengths describes this as; "People exceptionally talented in the Significance theme want to make a big impact. They are independent and prioritize projects based on how much influence they will have on their organization or people around them. You want to be very significant in the eyes of other people. In the truest sense of the word you want to be recognized. You want to be heard. You want to stand out. You want to be known. In particular, you want to be known and appreciated for the unique strengths you bring. You feel a need to be admired as credible, professional, and successful. Likewise, you want to associate with others who are credible, professional, and successful. And if they aren't, you will push them to achieve until they are. Or you will move on. An independent spirit, you want your work to be a way of life rather than a job, and in that work you want to be given free rein, the leeway to do things your way. Your yearnings feel intense to you, and you honor those yearnings. And so your life is filled with goals, achievements, or qualifications that you crave." - Their values are reflective of the culture. Specifically "Make it happen", "100% for the customer", and "Embrace our shared destiny".

      Cons

      - There have been other negative reviews left from past employees and interviewees, that have somehow been removed. This is an example of the CEO's significance, determination, and lack of openness to feedback. - To say there is high employee turnover would be an understatement. In the year and a bit that I worked for SN over 20 people either left or were let go. The team was only 13 people on average. - SN has been trying to hire developers for over 3 years now. - Micro-management is often disguised as collaboration. At the time, almost every project was going through the CEO for approval. Unfortunately, there was also a constant fear of projects not being "perfect" so shipping projects often took months longer than they should. Successively this meant that staff didn't feel trusted for their expertise, nor that they had any autonomy over their work. - When communicating that employees were leaving or were let go, there was a lack of tact or consideration to how the staff was feeling. - Intimidation was often used as a motivator. When a bad glass door review was posted we were called into a team meeting and pressured to come forward. Then asked to go write a positive review. - Once witnessed a male employee mock a female employee in a meeting and the entire executive team laughed. - The terms "flat hierarchy" and "open door policy" are thrown around. Because employees were often let go without attempting to coach or give the opportunity to correct behaviors, few employees felt safe being honest with their managers about their feelings. Flat hierarchy usually implies that employees can be involved in decision making -People who are promoted to management roles are great at their craft, not at people management and there is little support for them to develop their people management skills.

      avatar
      Social Nature Response
      5y
      As the founder and CEO, I care deeply about the human experience at work and am committed to continuous improvement; and so I have personally responded to this former employee's concerns (see below). For those interested in joining our growing team and our #trynatural mission, I invite you to contact me directly at annalea@socialnature.com if you want to discuss our culture further. After a challenging year, I’m proud to say that we came out of COVID-19 stronger than ever thanks to a resilient team that lived our values to make it happen, be customer obsessed and embrace our shared destiny. Today, we have grown to 25 people and are on track to be 32 by the end of this year! We’ve also expanded our leadership team to include an experienced VP Engineering and a VP Sales who are invested in the growth and development of their teams. Although hiring software engineers in Vancouver is a very real struggle (for all local tech companies), our new VP Engineering and Director of Product Management is on track to building a 10 person #techforgood product and engineering team by the end of this year (which will represent ⅓ of our company). Today, there are many great things happening at Social Nature. I’m proud to share that in March 2021 we were recognized with a Certified Great Place to Work in Canada™ award based on a current staff survey, and in February 2021 the SupportingLines™ Institute recognized Social Nature as having a high-performance culture based on our outstanding employee engagement survey results. To our former team member and the author of this review - thank you for the feedback, there is always something we can learn from these reviews and I understand that your intent is to try and make us better. While I don’t agree with the way things are represented here entirely, I'm truly sorry you didn’t have an exceptional experience. I take Glassdoor feedback seriously and since reading this review, our leadership team has taken several actions: - As a leadership team, we are committed to connecting with our respective teams to understand how we can reinforce flexibility and empowerment at every level. We’re not intending to micromanage and appreciate the feedback. As our team grows, dynamics and ways of working need to change and we recognize this as a never ending improvement process. Thank you for reminding us to be conscious of this. - As a female founder, I'm particularly conscious about issues of diversity and inclusion. We have established a confidential line of communication for employees with the SupportingLines™ Institute, an organization that is an extension of our People and Culture team and that is bound by the coaching code of ethics, so that we can address any HR concerns right away. I also encourage any direct feedback and will be there to listen without judgement and openness. And our leadership team is committed to having 1:1s with their direct reports every two weeks no matter how busy things get, to ensure that any issues are surfaced in a timely fashion and people feel supported. - As our team grows quickly, we are always working on ways to better support our teams and our people leaders, as we know that some of them may be new to this role. This includes coaching opportunities for people leaders and, of course, encouraging upwards feedback from these people leaders' team members in order to help them learn and grow. Recently, the SupportingLines Institute held a workshop for our entire team on how to deliver effective feedback (using the coach approach) so that everyone is empowered to share feedback with each other in an open and mindful way.

      Explore other reviews about Social Nature

      5.0
      17 May 2022
      Senior strategic partnerships manager
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Even with remote working, the sense of team has been established. Everyone is aligned and pointing in the same direction. Our founder is very good at keeping the mission at the forefront and talks about it openly and consistently. Roles are clearly defined as are expectations. Work Life Balance is a priority.

      Cons

      I love being able to work remotely, but I do sometimes wish I could go into an office to see other humans.

      avatar
      Social Nature Response
      4y
      Thank you for taking the time to leave such a positive review! We are thrilled that you value our work and our team so highly, and believe in our mission and vision for the future. We also appreciate your feedback and the fact that you want to see MORE of our team in person! With our hybrid model, there are lots of perks, but we continue to work hard to incorporate many social events for our remote team as well to keep our team connected.
      5.0
      6 Jun 2021
      Business development specialist
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Imagine working in a tech startup where you actually have a deeply kind and experienced Founder and CEO, who walks the talk of her values, sets a big and audacious vision to change the economy for healthier people and planet, attracts creative, diverse, high performers, creates a culture of psychological safety, and sets an energizing and competitive pace by rolling up her sleeves to get the work done. Oh, and actually runs a disciplined business that grew 87% during a pandemic while many were getting crushed. Sound too good to be true? It would have for me as well until I met the Founder and CEO, Annalea Krebs, and the rest of the Social Nature team. Over the past twenty years, I have worked in five industries and supported hundreds of organizations as an employee, entrepreneur, service provider and leadership coach who specializes in supporting high performers. I joined Social Nature in a Business Development capacity after seeing the potential for this company to solve a really important problem in the CPG natural products space, with a creative multichannel approach, while also introducing hundreds of thousands of consumers to healthier lifestyles. I have also witnessed a lot of leaders in my day, and very few have the natural abilities of Annalea Krebs, the Founder and CEO of Social Nature. By extension, the leadership team she’s attracted also stands out in their balanced approach. Most successful leaders either are great at vision, or great at managing and execution - it's rare to find both in one person, let alone multiple people on one team who are also just great human beings. Social Nature should be a case study for every business school to demonstrate what the modern startup could look like. And to top it off, it’s rare to find a mission-based company operating at this level.

      Cons

      If you are not a self-starter, used to startup uncertainty, or understand the constant flexibility and hard work required in creating something new to solve some really big market challenges, it's probably not a great fit. It requires super smart people with an unbalanced amount of audacious dedication and great attitudes to make startups work. This is how great things get built. If you are interested in taking on Goliath and creating a smarter way for consumers to shop through innovative tech, connect with innovative better-for-you-brands, and change the world - then this is an awesome opportunity to have a ride with a startup that has a good chance of making a dent in the universe - or at least the natural products industry.

      3
      avatar
      Social Nature Response
      5y
      Thank you for taking the time to leave such a positive review! We are thrilled that you value our work and our team so highly, and believe in our mission and vision for the future. We also appreciate your feedback and will work hard to include it in our future work.
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