A once great place to work is now going downhill fast. - Accommodation Manager Kaplan International Languages Employee Review

Please accept my sincere thanks for the feedback in your employee review. As one of Kaplan International English's (KIE) priorities, the management team is working hard to reinvent the company culture to one in which honest feedback, no matter how difficult it is to hear, is both respected and encouraged. While I understand and appreciate your feedback, I do respectfully disagree with your conclusion that KIE is an organization that is "going downhill fast." Without a doubt, we have areas upon which we can improve, but in the past several months I have been inspired and encouraged by the energy, creativity, and passion of the staff here at KIE. In the face of strong headwinds in the language training industry, we are seeing resilience and stability throughout the organization demonstrated in the spirit of the worldwide KIE team. Much of your post relates to workload levels at schools and to issues of work/life balance. As I reference above, the worldwide English language training industry has gone through a challenging period in the past several years. As such, it has been necessary for all members of the KIE team to step up, do more with less, and pull together in the face of the adversity facing our industry. While this has certainly not been easy for anyone on the team, I believe that the fortunes of the ELT industry will turn around. At KIE we always ask a lot of our teams and by all accounts the work does not conform to a strict 9-5 schedule, particularly in the high season. Your comments about staff working 80-hour work weeks, however, raise particular concern, as this would be neither encouraged nor permitted. In the case of needed overtime, managers should be following follow local guidelines for overtime pay or time off in lieu of pay, and I have been assured by the KIE directors of operations that this is the case. If there is ever an example when this is not happening, however, the specifics of each case should be brought to the attention of the human resources team. Your assertion that student safety is of no concern to management is alarming and bears further investigation. So that there is no question or ambiguity, I stress that at KIE student safety and security is always our top priority. Further, all KIE schools are regularly inspected by industry accrediting bodies which demand compliance with strict rules related to student welfare. School managers are responsible for ensuring that the needs of our students are met on all levels; and in implementing the recent organizational restructure, we prioritized student learning outcomes, welfare, and overall satisfaction. Your experience seems to suggest the contrary, yet your comments are quite general. Of course, any student safety concerns should be raised and addressed urgently. While I understand that Glassdoor is an anonymous site, I would encourage you to contact me with specifics of your concerns regarding student safety. We are striving to improve our recruitment, hiring and internal promotion practices, and your comments about favoritism and lack of fairness in internal staff hiring will be helpful to this end. I have spoken to the head of our human resources team, and we will look more deeply into the general concerns you raise. We seek to fill positions with the most qualified candidates available, and we are committed to ensuring that individuals who are promoted have proven themselves to be hard-working, talented and dedicated team members who consistently drive results. Any instances of nepotism or favoritism should be reported, investigated and, of course, addressed. To do this, I encourage any staff member who experiences this to speak to me and our head of HR directly. I regret that your experience working with KIE was so negative. You seem to suggest that there is little or no appreciation on the part of KIE management as to the contributions of our school staff. I assure you that this could not be further from the truth. Having worked in this field for 25 years, I understand how challenging the work of running a successful English school is. Your feedback, however, indicates to me that we need to do a better job expressing our appreciation to our worldwide staff. We will take the opportunity of your post to figure out just how to do that! Sincerely, Dave (C.O.O.)