Disorganized, Miscommunication, Favouritism - Anonymous employee Studio Y Creations Employee Review

Miscommunication was rampant—people in each department told each other different things, failed to tell others important information, and micromanaged teams that were not their own. Sales people would often fail to pass along client requests resulting in upset customers, and more work for everyone else. Sales also worked on commission, so they were incentivized to upsell, and would often go behind the manager's back to ask artists to ignore what was in their schedule and on the client brief, in order to work on their client's project according to the salesperson's vision, instead. There was no understanding of each department's role in the company. Sculptors would get frustrated with designers, designers with sales, sales with the CAD department, etc, because no one understood the limitations and role that each department played in the workflow. The owners made little to no effort to fix this, and educate each department on what each team did and how we could support each other. This resulted in nonstop gossip and complaints between employees. Owners sat in on meetings making people too uncomfortable to share their own ideas. People also came out of meetings with no understanding of what the end goal/project/deadline was. Everyday felt like a giant game of corporate telephone. Feedback on projects was confusing. It was not unusual to see a coworker be told that they had done good work on a project, and then later have a manager ask a different employee to redo all of the other person's work. Instead of being given clear feedback on how to improve, employees were often told that they were doing fine; then a new hire for the same position would be brought on and the old employee fired as soon as the new person had finished their training. This happened numerous times, once with a senior manager who had worked there for over 10 years. The company paid well below industry standard wages. Bonuses were given based on quarterly employee reviews, but managers couldn't explain/didn't understand the metric that was used to calculate employee review scores, which made improving those scores difficult and confusing. The owners and managers had employees who were clearly their favourites, and valued their work and input over everyone else's. Attendance was taken every morning after the morning bell, and if you showed up two minutes after that bell, you would be marked down for tardiness.