Horizon House Employee Reviews about "horizon house"

Cons

Everything you need to know, you can get from skimming the reviews from the past year. Nearly every single one is rated 1 or 2 stars with a very small number of exceptions. The pay is WELL below market rate, even for non-profits. Since I've been here, multiple people across different regions in my department alone have left the organization for better paying jobs. You get what you pay for and it REALLY shows in employee morale and the quality of their work as well as their very high turnover rate. Nearly all of the entry level positions pay below a living wage of $15/hour and many of them require some amount of on-call availability, so good luck having another job. I knew multiple people who worked in salaried positions here for years, but still had to have a side business or rely on public benefits to make ends meet. Of all the jobs I've had in Philly, this one BY FAR has the fewest holidays: 9 days for the entire year. And to make things worse, they're now going in the OPPOSITE direction and converting many salaried positions to be hourly so they can pay even less. Simply put: they really do not care about their employees here. You are an input in this business no different than some office supplies or furniture. And on that note: the work here is DIFFICULT. Really difficult. Many employees (who are earning peanuts) have to work in dangerous situations with little to no assistance from the organization. If an employee is physically assaulted or harassed by a participant, they have to choose between using their very limited paid time off to recover, or going right back to working in that same environment. One employee had all the tires slashed on her vehicle which she needed to go to work and they offered zero assistance to her in replacing them. On top of all that, there is a LOT of stress and trauma employees have to deal with (both personally and vicariously), but the most you'll get from Horizon House is a referral to their EAP for the maybe 2 free sessions of therapy you get. A lot of the direct care providers who work here have told me specifically that even if they're the target of a violent incident which ends up being investigated, they end up being treated like THEY did something wrong. I haven't spoken with a single direct care employee who feels like Horizon House cares about them and has their back. They hire MANY positions as temp-to-perm, meaning that you have to work 4-6 months (they say 3 up-front, but they don't tell you that the contract they sign with the temp agency effectively makes it more like 6) at a lower rate than the position actually pays, you're still required to do their 3 month 'orientation' period afterwards without any benefits EVEN IF you already worked FULL-TIME for 6 months prior in the same position, AND you get no time off so if you get sick then you're choosing between affording rent or getting better. HR drags their feet F.O.R.E.V.E.R. with hiring and raises and promotions. But you can sure bet that they're going to push you into picking up the responsibilities of your new role well before your pay is adjusted to reflect that. The turnover rate here is very, very high and many departments and service locations have been severely understaffed for months, if not a year or longer. One would think that this, coupled with the fact that unemployment rates are the lowest they've been in many, many years, would cause them to consider how competitive their compensation is and how they could change to attract more talent, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There are very few 'young people' who work here. The majority of those who do are rarely here for more than a few months or a year because...well, see above. I imagine this is going to cause enormous headaches within the next decade when the baby boomers start retiring, leaving a lot of openings that they will need to attract younger workers to fill. And the final point I want to raise is that there are absolutely no feedback mechanisms within the organization whatsoever. Not a single one. I suspect most of these problems have been on-going for so long because upper management is so far detached from the actual 'on the ground' work that happens and so sheltered from having to hear how their lowest level staff feeling about it that they really, truly don't know any of this. In all of my interactions with them, it seems like it's never even occurred to them to seriously consider the compensation and working conditions of their employees. Instead, they treat employee compensation like a nuisance and seem to do everything they can to pay you as little as possible for as long as possible while getting the most work out of you that they can. Oh, and you can't use the wi-fi here (I know I said the last one was the final one, but this was so shocking to me I felt I had to mention it). Yes, you read that correctly: it is almost 2019 and you as an employee are not permitted to use the wi-fi (so you better hope you can somehow afford unlimited data with what they pay you!). There's a guest network that participants and their companions and guests are allowed to use it, but you aren't even allowed to use that one!

Cons

Poor executive leadership. The CEO advises employees to go to him as a final resort for solution, but don't expect much from him if he would have to go out of his way to do the right thing for you. Power corrupts and I don't trust CEOs in non-profit organizations who stay in the CEO office for decades. Horizon House needs a new CEO from outside the agency with more integrity that Jeff. Don't get me wrong, Jeff has done a lot for the organization in the past 25 years, but it is time for him to leave.