7 giu 2020
Dipendente anonimo
Risposta di Quorum
5yTo kick it off, I appreciate that you took the time to write a detailed review that helped me have more insight into your experience at Quorum. I am also glad that your personal experiences with me seem to have been positive—it is not everyday that I am called a "gem" who "add[s] to the cultural enrichment... of the company." Nevertheless, a lot of the experiences that you describe do not live up to Quorum's ideals or my personal ideals, and for that, I am sorry.
Since you are a former team member, I cannot know for certain when you left Quorum–whether it was two months ago or two years ago. Below, I have endeavored to acknowledge your experiences as well as indicate where I think Quorum has and has not made progress over time. For ease of review, I have addressed each of the topics in the order in which you raised them:
Company Values: I agree with you that Quorum operated without a clearly defined set of company values for too long—resulting in team members having difficulty making independent decisions that align with who we want to be as an organization. In early 2020, we attempted to address this by launching Quorum's current company values: Invest in People, Take the Lead, Own the Execution, Embrace the Rumble, and Build Something You're Proud Of. On a similar timeline, we implemented specific territories for salespeople, which gives team members the flexibility to choose who to pitch from among hundreds to thousands of accounts. One thing that has remained the same over time is that we work with client organizations on both sides of the aisle, including examples that you cited such as working with both pro- and anti-choice groups, and more. We have relatively recently worked to clarify and expand the specific standards we use to determine whether or not we will work with a client (e.g., we will not work with groups that use our tools contrary to the First Amendment, etc.) and published these standards internally for team members to access. We have also worked to be more explicit that our choice to work with a client does not mean that we endorse that organization's mission, beliefs, or actions. And, have worked to be more public with our corporate expression of mission, belief, and values, ranging from an LGBTQ spotlight in our recent customer newsletter to our CEO's anti-racist public statement. As a result, some potential and current clients may choose to not to work with us, and we're okay with that.
Inclusion and Diversity: As Quorum's Executive Sponsor of Inclusion and Diversity, I take your feedback and experiences about inclusion and diversity very seriously. If you have any specific examples of policies or programs that you think we should start, modify, or eliminate based upon your experiences at Quorum, please email me at melissa@quorum.us. To provide more background context on the Inclusion and Diversity Council, the Council was started almost two years ago based upon the suggestion and grassroots advocacy of two team members. I worked with them to start the Council with our Co-Founders endorsement, but not direct involvement, with the genuine desire to make our workplace an environment where all team members can grow and flourish. We did not at the time, nor do we today, intend to use the Inclusion and Diversity Council as a pacifier for real concerns. Since that was your experience, it's clear to me that we have more work to do to highlight the purpose of our work, involve others in that work, and share specific outcomes. In that vein, we now publish an Annual Inclusion and Diversity Report. Here are some of the highlights: Since 2017, we have increased company-wide representation of women from 35% to 48%, including 43% of executive leadership positions, and underrepresented racial minorities from 6% to 18%. From those numbers alone it is clear that while many efforts with female hiring and retention have been successful, the same cannot yet be said about underrepresented minorities—particularly black and latinx team members. We have recently made changes to our job spending to increase the percentage of our recruiting budget spent on hiring black and latinx team members and are evaluating a series of more comprehensive changes. Earlier this year, we also launched a pledge and slack community to help crowdsource ideas and see commitment to actions that are intended to increase inclusion and diversity at small and medium (1-500 team members) organizations like ours. You can learn more about these efforts and provide feedback at www.pathforprogress.org. And finally, our Co-Founders and other members of the Leadership Team are now actively (in many cases, daily) involved in the work of not only our Inclusion and Diversity Council, but also our growing number of affinity groups (e.g., Queer@Quorum, People of Color at Quorum, Quorum for Mental Health).
Opportunities for Growth: As you mention, as a small organization, we do not have as many roles and opportunities to offer as a large corporation. That is still true today. We do take steps to invest in our team members development (e.g., a 24-month sales training program, $600-2000 per year in professional development funds) and have recently started tracking and reporting on our Annual Career Path Rate—or the % of team members who earn a promotion or receive a transfer within one year. I'm excited to be able to say that Annual Career Path Rate is projected to be ~40% for 2020. Nevertheless, for folks looking to have many departments to explore and gain skills, a Career Services Center to provide guidance, and /or other dedicated learning and development resources, we are probably not the right next career choice.
Compensation: Below market compensation has been one of the most consistent and consistently fair criticisms of working at Quorum. As a 100% bootstrapped start-up that has never accepted venture capital funding, we started out paying everyone minimum wage. However, as you mention elsewhere in your review, we are not today the company we were in 2014 and our standards need to and have risen. Going into 2020, we conducted a comprehensive local market value adjustment exercise and made large increases to compensation across a number of roles. Today, for all thirteen roles that we benchmarked—which make-up more than 80% of our workforce—we can confidently say that we pay within 5% or above the market rate. We also disclose our salaries on job descriptions on the Careers Page (quorum.us/careers). Since it sounds like you worked on our Customer Success team, I will specifically highlight that the most recent on-target earnings for entry-level (0-1 years experience) Customer Support Specialists is $50,500.00—$52,500.00 and the most recent on-target earnings for entry-level (1-3 years experience) Customer Success Managers is $61,500.00–$67,500.00. Please note that these compensation numbers apply to US-based team members only and increase commensurate with experience.
Professionalism and Social Connections: Like you, I have experienced many of the pros and cons of Quorum's casual work environment, including impacts on professionalism and social connections. When I joined in 2017, I was part of a wave of "new Quorum" team members that brought previous professionals experiences to grow the culture and company. In 2017, the company was young—both in its history and in its average workforce age. While age is only one factor, and not a deterministic one at that, I believe that a growing number of team members who have years of valuable professional experiences helped us to evolve our culture to expect a level of professionalism that was not always present. It sounds like you may have been one of those such team members and, for that contribution, I sincerely thank you. Over time, I have been glad to see the average age at Quorum increase, and to see professionalism increase along with it. For example, from 2019 to 2020 alone, the average age of all team members increased by more than 3 years and the average age of members of our executive leadership team increased by more than 10 years. Today, I am proud to see team members of all ages and backgrounds rise to the challenge of upholding and advancing high standards for professionalism. Based upon my tenure, today, I am also solidly a member of "old Quorum." With our continued rapid headcount growth, every six months now, I watch the boundaries between "new" and "old" Quorum shift and change. While I think there will aways be natural formations of social groups, we encourage widespread outreach to all new hires. And, although I certainly cannot speak for all team members, I can say that I personally feel that "cliques" are no longer a defining part of our culture today. If you were to ever rejoin the team, I can only hope that you would feel the same. Thank you again for taking the time to share your experiences.