This small, local company has been in Winston for over 20 years. Always with a supportive, caring CEO,,,until recently. Family and work life balance has always come first, up until this week. We were promised the option of being remote moving forward in 2021. This week it was ripped out from under us. Inmar is notorious for reduced compensation and non-competitive wages (this can be proven via Glassdoor or LinkedIn Salary). To make up for it, the incentive for working at the company was the family first and work/life balance prioritization. Now, the current CEO literally laughed at us as he told us we had to return to office, despite the company having the MOST profitable quarter EVER last quarter, while we were all remote. He was so cold and callus, leaning back in his chair with an arrogant demeanor, knowing he was up-ending people's lives. Additionally, merit raises are only around 3%, bonuses, if awarded, are hundreds of dollars once a year, promotion salary increases have been decreased, travel is being restricted, and suddenly we are pushing people to take early retirement. They demand we participate in pulse surveys, but then ignore the results. Over 80% of my department passionately wants to stay remote. I would think other departments are the same. Yet our voices will not be heard. There will be no compensation increase for those that have to now go into the office (anyone within the 35 mile radius of the WS office), which is quite frankly, discriminatory. Lower income employees will suffer greatly, while those that live 36 miles away or those that are privileged enough to move will benefit. We managers are given less than 2 months to plan, with individual contributors given 4. I have worked here for 10 years. Since COVID, I have had numerous external job officers, that paid more, but I turned them down to remain remote. Those companies are still remote, and I will reach out to them. Insultingly, the CEO also scoffed when we asked if they were still hiring remote roles, and said "of course, we want to do what we can to get the top talent"....so the people that have to return are not top talent and aren't worth pleasing? He spoke of preventing fragmentation by doing this....I have ~15 associates; 3 are just out of the radius, 4 are out of state, and one has an accommodation. So only myself and 8 of my employees will be in the office but the others will not? How is that not fragmented. I will be leaving the company. I will not be giving a notice. I cannot think of a more disrespectful thing to do to people that have worked tooth and nail for this company, signing on early and staying on late, losing wives and husbands and parents and children to COVID, which was not even addressed in the framing of personal health safety. We took pay cuts during COVID, willingly, 401k match loss, overall spending cuts...and now CEO thinks he can force us back in like this is Apple, who had to end up back tracking? If I'm going to work in office, I'm going to do it at another local company that can exponentially increase my salary (check out RAI, Hanes, Pepsi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America). What a shame.
