Vantaggi
Very thorough training. Training, while dry at times, was very extensive and I felt very well prepared when I got to the floor.
Svantaggi
Let me start by saying that their scoring is incredibly manipulated on here and unethical. They never have had this high of a rating so I checked dates and sure enough loads of 4-5 star ratings by current employees ALL WITHIN 2-3 DAYS. As a former employee who knows how much they struggle to keep people around and get new clinicians hired, I would bet my life that they offered an incentive to current employees to write reviews. So that’s one major ding. Sometimes difficult to find a free desk (no assigned workspaces, which is a frank lloyd Wright concept that has been extremely poorly executed and dumbed down to modern office settings and has shown to do nothing positive for employees except save the companies money on space). which is frustrating when they’re so strict about being logged in on the dot. Taking time off is a nightmare. You’re expected to give 2 MONTHS in advance and expect to not be approved. Then they give you one option, bother your overworked and underpaid coworkers to try and get them to cover the days they didn’t approve. I saw people email about not being approved for random days within a vacation where they’re going out of town. But keep preaching how important self care is..just don’t expect them to allow you to actually implement any. The work you do as a Masters and Doctoral level clinician could easily be done by bachelors level social workers. You only get to stick to a script and when you try to work more intuitively they tell you things like “you’re not a detective”. My guess is they want graduate clinicians because it looks good for new business clients. They certainly pay you like a bsw. I’ve watched videos from volunteers on hotlines with no mental health background and they do almost the same level of work. My point is they could be using less educated people instead of underpaying actual professionals to be a glorified call center employee. The ceo is supposedly accessible but yet when I did reach out, my chats were read and never responded to. I heard one floor supervisor talk about another employee they had dated in not so nice words on the floor, talking about how crazy she was to other employees. He was incredibly rude and inappropriate. I have a work policy of not gossiping in the workplace and it’s so disheartening to see people in leadership roles doing it at work where others can hear. Really can impact morale. I felt very positive about the company in my first few months but after seeing how little they actually care about their clinicians (the employees who work the business side of things seem to get treated much better in terms of salaries, time off, etc), how they punish you for going to continuing education even tho it’s often required by your license (you have to use your own vacation time off and they give you an incredibly small stipend only if you’re licensed), how discouraging they are to actually take time off for yourself, How exhausting the work is, and how low the wages are, I quickly realized everyone there is pretty much miserable just waiting for their license to be obtained so they can leave. Half of the people I started with were gone before we even got to the floor and by the time I left there were only 2 people left. Best thing I did was quit and find new employment. My skills are being developed again, I feel valued and respected, and I actually get time off and encouraged to take CEU courses even tho I’m not licensed yet. Where I work now has a crisis team and they pay their crisis therapists about 30 an hour. I looked up pay distribution in Portland (where I live) and my pay was so little at Protocall that I was considered LOW INCOME. That’s right, they pay their graduate level clinicians what the city considers a low income wage. But they respect their clinicians, right? And yes they supposedly upped the wage by 2 dollars. What they don’t tell you is literally nobody actually works 40 hours. Almost all employees work 32 because it’s too stressful and they require you to be on call.