ResCare Reviews

Pros

I enjoyed my ability at the company to get promoted four times over the course of 5 years. I pretty much was promoted from within every year. Started working there at the age of 19 and they treated me with respect even though I was considerably younger than alot of my competition. My final promotion was a transfer as well. Income provided enough financial support for me and my family of three.

Cons

The pay could of been better for the workload I was expected to complete. While on salary I regularly went over 40 hours a week and it became difficult to manage my family as well.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more constructive feedback, where I was at the place seemed to be run by fear. Now the first company I worked for for ResCare was a great balanace so they should try to mimic that company.

Pros

Easy job
Mainly supervision of "Participants"
Flexible Scheduling

Cons

No real advancement opportunities
High turnover
No consistency
Pay is low
Violence at workplace

Pros

Large company that has name recognition in the industry. Health and Dental benefits are good. You can make a positive impact in people's lives. Most of the people in non-management positions are competent and good employees.

Cons

In my location, there is a lot of nepotism, which has caused serious morale problems in the office. Management has family members on the payroll in staff positions where they do very little work but are well compensated. There are incompetent managers who lack the experience for their positions, but who were also placed in their jobs due to nepotism. Everyone else (i.e., the competent people) work very hard with no pay raises, no praise and constant criticism. Very stressful environment due to managers' micro-managing staff that know more than the managers. Senior management doesn't get out to the offices sites very often and when they do visit, they don't talk to rank and file employees to find out what's really going on at each site. They only talk to the managers, who are very good at throwing everyone under the bus in order to keep their own positions. There is an over emphasis on the bottom line profits and not enough emphasis in realizing your employees are your greatest asset. If they treated their employees better, they would probably achieve their bottom line profits, because employees wouldn't be so depressed and demoralized.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue: Go out and visit your office sites. Talk to the rank and file employees, not just the managers. Listen and respond to employees concerns and complaints. Treat employees with respect and fairness. Treat employees as if you value them as people and team members.

Pros

Support from the head of our local office who really cares about the consumers' needs.
To help the consumers in their lives.

Cons

Wow, where do you start? I have been an employee for 7+ years in middle management. While, from my perspective, the company spends so much time catering to the wants and needs of the front-line direct care staff, there is little attempt to acknowledge or reward the middle managers. Over the past several years, we have lost pay raises (last one was 5 years ago), 401k company match, PTO buy back, mileage reimbursements has decreased, and the health insurance seems to get more expensive and less comprehensive with each year. Yes, the front-line employees have lost many of these things as well, but they still continue to get pay raises and can buy back their PTO time. While I believe that it is very important to treat these front-line employees well, I also strongly believe that it is just as important (if not more so) to treat the middle managers well. With happy middle managers, the quality of care and oversight of the day-to-day programs will improve. Right now, middle managers are overworked, underpaid, and just plain frustrated. There is no hope for a possible pay raise, there is no hope that anything that has been taken away will ever improve. We, the middle managers, are the ones who work all different shifts, weekends and holidays, covering for front-line employess when there are call offs or when there is a shortage of staff. We are the ones who are paid by salary but work much more than 40 hours per week. We are the ones who feel completely ignored and unappreciated by the senior people at the corporate office. It really makes you not care so much about how well you do your job, and that is sad since the quality of our consumers' lives depends on how well we do our jobs. But I get the feeling that the quality of consumers' lives is not of the utmost important thing for this company. It is the bottom line and how much money can be made.

Advice to Senior Management

Appreciate the middle managers. Quit taking away benefits and incentives to be a manager. Please can we get a pay raise after these past 5 years? In reality, because of no pay raises, essentially we are all taking pay cuts every year due to the rise in the cost of living. Take time to ask your employees throughout the company their ideas and thoughts and quit sending down blanket mandates without asking all levels of employees how this may affect operations. And please realize that in the end, how well we do our jobs is determined by the care that our consumers get, not by how much profit we make.

Pros

pretty easy to get time off when you need it

Cons

The board (HGAC) who oversees our project makes decisions without either thinking them through or ensuring that support is in place to execute those decisions. That is how we ended up in a call center where our customers get horrible service. We don't have the right technology or enough workers to service the customers. Our customers have to do everything by fax, and faxes are uploaded electronically. There is no way to know who the incoming fax is from until the application is processed. So, the customers send applications over and and over over again - and keep calling to see whether the fax is here - but we DON'T KNOW, so we can't tell them! I heard our regional manager tell a state representative that it takes 5-7 days to process an application. That is a LIE; it takes more like 5-6 weeks, and that is usually only after a customer calls to complain, and only if we didn't lose the application to begin with. The call center was a very bad idea that was executed very poorly. I used to enjoy helping the customers; now I am embarrassed to tell anyone where I work.

Advice to Senior Management

Rescare: clean house and get all-new management.
Board: pay enough so that the contractors can properly implement your decisions.
TWC: get a new board to oversee Workforce.

Pros

Good benefits available including a lot of health insurance options and you also get PTO which can be used for sick or vacation time

Cons

Those who worked hard at their jobs but didn't play "office politics" were let go and replaced by people who were friends and/or connected to upper management. Behind the scene deals often detemined promotions instead of performance.

Pros

They are always hiring and being a direct-care employee is easy.

Cons

If you become a manager you are on call 24/7 and you will find yourself working holidays and weekends frequently.

Advice to Senior Management

If you would pay your managers for their time, or at least give them a better salary they would be less likely to leave.

Pros

A very diverse company with several services offered.

Cons

A global company with over 70 percent of its revenues generated from government contracts. This causes the business to operate at the mercy of various over-sight boards that do not always follow and keep up with current trends within the industry.

Pros

I was able to make my own schedule and the pay was decent.

Cons

They started cutting milage which was not good for me because I drive an SUV. Some days I would have to drive 30 miles one way to my place of work and then drive a client around for 40 miles and had to do a 30 mile drive home. The way that contact notes were also due was not effective. When I started contact notes were due two times a month. When I quit they started billing weekly which meant that I had to turn in paperwork every monday or I got in trouble.

Advice to Senior Management

The management could be a little more effective at returning phone calls.

Pros

it's a paycheck, and it does provide (very expensive) insurance (with minimal benefits)

Cons

Project manager makes staffing decisions based on favoritism, not sound business; regional managers are inexperienced and unfocused; there exists a scapegoat mentality in which project managers take no responsibility for either decisions or project performance, but instead find line staff to blame it on and, yes, the scapegoats do get fired; very little cohesion between offices because there is no knowledgeable, consistent oversight - the offices are Indians with no chief; the new call center is a complete joke and will be the downfall of this project; the entire management team operates through gossip; upper management pays little attention to what is going on here and the project management lies to them when they do inquire. If you want to serve customers, avoid, if at all possible! It is, ultimately, the customers who suffer the most from the incompetent management of this project. And, the incompetent management includes the local board who is supposed to be providing oversight but does not.

Advice to Senior Management

To project manager - Retire. No, wait. If you retire, one of the incompetent regional managers might take your place. Get rid of the worthless "regional managers"; stop giving transfers based on favoritism; get some managers for the call center and start answering customer phone calls; and then, retire.
To senior management - Ever since Rescare acquired Arbor, the Arbor structure began to disintegrate and is now nearly worthless. Arbor was a company I was proud to work for; Rescare is not.