I would not recommend employment with Upper Bay, which is very disheartening to me. There was a time when I would have recommended them to anyone, but my experience has steadily declined in the last few years due to questionable leadership.
Salaries haven’t increased in years. However, the CEO assured staff that they would be coming in September of ‘23, then November of ‘23, March of ‘24, then July of ‘24. I hear she’s promised staff “news of pending raises” in the next few weeks, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It should be noted that salaries are well below the average for new therapists entering the field. The last several who left my team within their first year of employment found jobs that started out paying 20-30k more per year. The sad part here is that MA reimbursement rates have been steadily increasing, so more money is coming in, but not filtering to the lower ranking employees.
While salaries haven’t increased, expectations certainly have. Every few months more paperwork is added to an already paperwork heavy job, with no consideration that over several years, these tiny additions add up to workers putting in regular overtime, but not being compensated due to being salaried employees. It’s even worse for administrative staff, who are short staffed, but drowning in work, and typically covering multiple roles, meaning they can’t support clinical staff, who end up doing administrative work in addition to clinical. And now the few administrative workers who remain are starting to get laid off.
UBCSS has struggled to hire and hold on to new employees for years. The vast majority of new hires quit within their first year. Sadly that’s not uncommon in the mental health field. But over the past year, long standing employees have begun leaving as well. People with over 15 years of dedicated service to this company. This includes program managers and division directors. If that’s not a red flag, I don’t know what is. There is no leadership training for new managers either, so this is reason for alarm. They are losing entire programs due to losing their staff for these programs, such as Child PRP. Please stay away from Upper Bay.
