Ownership and Responsibility Needed to Overcome Bullying, Start Treating Staff Like People - Anonymous employee ecobee Employee Review

1.0
30 Jun 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Social Events, Catered Company Wide-Meetings - Snacks, coffee, and tea - Amazing peers and colleagues who genuinely care for their work, users, and the environment.

Cons

In my opinion and based on my experience working at ecobee: - No diversity on the Leadership team. - HR and the leadership teams do not take employee grievances seriously. Even for serious grievances like bullying, harassment, and discrimination, employees are told, more or less, to toughen up and be more patient with their colleagues. - Though the company states "Openness" is one of its core values, staff are often gaslighted when they raise their concerns and met with sentiments that they should just be happy they have a job. Examples of gaslighting can be found in their responses to negative Glassdoor reviews. - HR and management are unempathetic and do little to support or respect their staff's mental health. - Some members of the HR team do not keep employee grievances in confidence and will gossip with their colleagues and peers after-hours. - Bullying is prevalent throughout many teams. Managers and supervisors who are consistently reported for verbally abusing and emotionally manipulating staff are kept on payroll and either no or ineffective corrective actions are taken. - Relating to the prevalent bullying, folks promoted from the customer service department are often treated with contempt and disrespect when they join other teams. Disparaging comments and belittlement by peers and management are common. - Salaries are below market value and there is no additional monetary benefits (retirement matching, performance bonus, overtime, etc.). Salaries are only recalculated during the annual review meaning it can take up to a year for your salary to be adjusted to reflect your new role and responsibilities. - Work-life balance is difficult to achieve. Many managers expect their staff to regularly work 50+ hours a week. Staff is passionate about tech, the environment, and the vision of empowering people, and management abuses this passion by expecting folks to work long hours at below market pay. - The HR Department and Leadership Team puts little thought into how their actions or inaction impacts their staff. As an example, the management of the COVID-19 response was appalling: it was not transparent, lead to 10% company-wide layoff, a disparaging article being published by Beta-Kit, and a PR stunt by ecobee in response to the article used their ex-staff as props on a website. Everyone was hurting after this debacle and HR and Leadership exacerbated stress and frustration. To the best of my knowledge, rather than actively supporting ex-staff in finding gainful employment with resume reviews, interview prep, written references or actively helping with networking, ecobee took the opportunistic approach and exploited their ex-staff to their benefit. To the best of my knowledge, though the site is called "hire ecobee," ecobee itself has made no attempt to re-hire their staff.

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ecobee Response
5y
Hello! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to write this review. We aim to create a great place to work for all our employees and we’re disappointed to hear that your experience was not up to standards. ecobee is committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment and does not condone workplace harassment or discrimination of, or by any of its employees. Any such complaint is treated as a serious matter and handled in a confidential manner. We encourage our employees to speak up if they feel things could be improved and offer several outlets to make their voice heard (i.e. engagement survey, HRBP model, etc). We hope you felt empowered to share your opinions during your time here and assure you that we will look to address all the places we missed in delivering a great experience to you. If you have any further details you’d like to share, please reach out to us at people.operations@ecobee.com.

Explore other reviews about ecobee

5.0
4 Oct 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Co-headquartered in Toronto and Leeds - very cosmopolitan with a high emphasis on DEI.

Cons

Tech company means people love ALLLLL the software. Information and resources are scattered across numerous platforms, which can be pretty frustrating.

1
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ecobee Response
2y
Hello, thank you for providing this feedback. We are so glad you liked the Toronto HQ & Leeds HQ (we agree, they're pretty great!) and felt the emphasis we put on DEI (this really matters to us). We appreciate your feedback regarding resource management and it is something we will think about going forward. Thanks again for your review and helping to make ecobee great!
5.0
18 Mar 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

ecobee is a great place to work because of the fantastic culture that exists here. Thanks to transparency from our CEO down, there are multiple teams helping support me in my role and hit my goals. Because there are so many intelligent, driven and willing people, we are able to work together to exceed goals and focus on what is important to our shared success. Many suggestions and support can be given because of it is known by everyone what you are working on and striving for. It also allows for frank conversations about what we can't work on because it would create misalignment with our goals. I am excited to be a part of a company that is constantly innovating, helping the planet, and looking to win in the market. Great time to be an ecopeep!

Cons

Too many great ideas and not enough resources to bring them all to life!

1
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ecobee Response
7y
Hello, thank you for taking the time to post your feedback, it is great to hear that you are enjoying your time at ecobee! Our team is dedicated to continually improving and creating a great place to work for all of our employees, so we thank you for your feedback that will allow us to continue to do that.
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