Dehumanizing. - Anonymous employee Varsity News Network Employee Review

Thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback here. Transparent feedback of all kinds helps us grow as a company, so I appreciate it and we will definitely take it into account. It's important to me that VNN be a place where people are valued, are recognized for doing great work, and have the opportunity to grow personally and professionally, and I’m disappointed that your experience didn’t live up to that. I will admit that we’ve made mistakes in building that ideal culture. As we've grown (nearly 10x in the past 3+ years) it's become more difficult to maintain the kind of tight alignment and transparency of information that came to us so easily as a smaller organization, and I know that relationships have been harder to build as a result. Those relationships (and transparent communication in general) are important at any size, which is why the senior leadership team has collaborated to put in place a comprehensive mission/vision/values document to serve as an anchor for all our activities. It’s also why we’ve put in place quarterly all-hands reviews (including financial performance), as well as individual 1on1s with all employees, to ensure issues like yours don’t go unaddressed in the future. All that being said, communication at scale is a big challenge, and one of my top priorities. I am really sorry that your experience in leaving VNN was poor as well. Terminating an employee is something I and we take very seriously, is never a surprise to the employee, and is only ever done as a last resort. Before we even consider that option, we first have many, many conversations with the employee about what needs changing, and give them the opportunity to make those changes. Only when all other efforts have failed do we consider parting ways with an employee. Thank you for the feedback, and while certainly your experience is not in any way what we strive to achieve for our team, I appreciate you sharing it so we can improve. Ryan