May 5, 2020
Alertus Technologies Response
6yWe are sorry to hear that your experience with Alertus was not what you expected. Based on your review, we can understand why. You have listed a lot of incorrect information about Alertus, so there seems to be a large disconnect between what you think you experienced and the reality of working here. While it doesn't happen very often at Alertus, we do still understand that it can be difficult to move on after an involuntary termination.
At Alertus, we strongly stand behind that we believe our employees are what makes Alertus great. When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, many sales-based companies like ours immediately began layoffs. We did not. We explained to our employees that now, more than ever, we needed everyone to step up and help the company stay productive and profitable so we could weather the unknown economic situation ahead with as many, and hopefully all, of them onboard.
What we could not endure, however, were employees who did not take this seriously or respect that by not working, or by misusing company credit cards, etc., they were jeopardizing their coworkers' job security. We believe we are all in this together.
To try to clear up some of the misunderstandings of what we have to offer, please see below the actual numbers and facts: (we can only address a few due to the character limit)
-15 Days of Accrued PTO. PTO combines Sick and Vacation leaves into one pool. Employees aren't all the same and don't have the same needs year to year.
-10 Paid Holidays/+Veteran’s Day. We thank you for your service! To "prove" veteran status, our employees just let HR know by saying, "I am a veteran."
-3% Match to our Retirement plan after vesting. Vesting is a combination of making $5,000 in two consecutive years. It could be as short as 13 months.
-Medical Benefits, EAP, and Tuition Reimbursement. We offer 4 different medical plans. The term “best” only applies to each individual picking the right plan for how they will utilize their benefits. We have an EAP and are an FMLA employer. As a small company, we are always on the lookout to improve our benefits offerings. We do offer a Certification and Training Reimbursement program to encourage employee development but on a little bit smaller of a scale at this time.
-We do offer flexible work schedules. Changes to a core work schedule simply need to be requested in advance and make sense for their job duties. We follow OPM’s guidance for inclement weather-related office closures and prior to Governor Hogan’s mandate, we were already teleworking in response to COVID-19. Employees can work with their managers to adjust their work schedules to meet the new demands of caring for children and mental health as we all adjust to this shift. We are also compliant with the extended FMLA eligibility.
-Telework. We don’t try to oversell this, prior to the pandemic, we were not a teleworking culture, as our culture was based around in-office collaboration. We did allow telework by request; within the policy. Due to Covid-19, we have been working remotely. How telework looks once the office reopens may change as we are learning more about how to have a collaborative remote culture. Our recruiters would never oversell this, it is not in their best interest to "trick" anyone into working here. They work here too and it would be awkward to have a disgruntled coworker and time consuming to eventually backfill a role.
-Ride Shares, Per Diems, and Credit Cards. We have a corporate Uber account for our employees. We know the travel per diems are tight, but they are not rigid. These per diems are base costs and do not include taxes or tips, and are often pre-negotiated rates with our preferred vendors. We are simply a small business asking our employees to do their part in keeping our costs as low as possible as we grow. We also issue company credit cards to our employees to remove the burden of waiting for reimbursements. Credit card rewards points are typically issued back to the employees in other types of perks spreading the benefits across to more than just to a few.
-Facilities & Technology. We are sorry there weren't enough men's toilet stalls in the men's bathrooms. We had 3 other sets of bathrooms available. The internet service did struggle to keep up with our rapid growth. That's an issue we began tackling before the pandemic to meet our increasing demands. We are in the process of getting a dedicated fiber line installed, and we had upgraded our current plan's speed before transitioning to work from home. The limited number of users accessing the VPN was never an issue pre-pandemic. During, we have sorted this out and it has been a learning experience for us. Half of our employees have been issued work laptops and all of our employees have mini desktop computers that can be easily picked up and taken home if needed. We also offer a corporate phone plan.