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Thank you for taking the time to share your perspectives on Glassdoor.
As a former employee you’ll know that we encourage courageous conversations that lead to positive change. In fact, preserving and improving communication across the company during these highly polarized times we live in, is one of our most important company priorities. Reviews like yours help us understand the varied perceptions people have of our workplace, and clarify where there may be misalignments.
While we always prefer to hear constructive feedback when someone is still with us, your review will help future candidates understand what it was like for you, and we take that seriously.
Based on the overall reviews here on Glassdoor, thankfully your assessment of the company as a toxic workplace is far from universal, and we are consistently working to do better. We’ve experienced enormous change over the past two years into a distributed workforce and leadership team based throughout the US and Hong Kong. While this cultural expansion is beyond how we thought we had to do business, it has allowed us to grow and build more diverse internal teams. Growth and change come with growing pains as we onboard new employees and people weave together their gifts, perspectives, and expectations.
While we strive to respond to every valid employee request, it’s simply not possible at our size to curate each personal preference into a policy that suits everyone. We look at the big picture to sustain a humane, welcoming, and respectful workplace where people enjoy the work they do and receive great benefits. For instance, in addition to full medical, dental, vision, FSA (Flexible Spending Account), Commuter and Healthcare Accounts, 401K with a match, pet insurance options, and PTO (Paid Time Off), In 2023 we are able to offer new benefits. Those new benefits include a paid day for volunteerism, paid flexible day to be used for personal/religious observation, and employee resource groups for LGBTQ+ and Black employees.
As far as the company feeling to you like a monarchy: Straub is one of few solo-owned studios of our size left in the industry. Most of our competitors have closed or sold to large conglomerates. With competent leadership, we weathered the shift from film to digital photography (1997), a major recession (2008), and a global pandemic (2020.) We pivoted each time to keep people working through challenge and uncertainty. This is a point of pride. We are grateful that some of our most talented employees have been with us for over 25 years, while making room for new talent to find and grow into fulfilling careers.
We hope this reply provides more perspective on where we are coming from as a business. Feel free to reach out via email if you’d like to discuss further.
We wish you the best as you choose your next career steps, and sincerely thank you for the years you invested at Straub.
Kevin Delahunty
Director of Talent and Innovation
