Pros
First, the important stuff... Leadership actively involved with employees? Yes. I feel like I personally know each person all the way up the org chart. They treat me like family, and although everyone has faults, I feel like they have my back. Each year I can see requests from the average joe actually being met. Career pathing? Yes. I'm clear on where I can go and what I need to get there. Through tools like TribeHR, my achievements are measurable and I can actually make an effort to get to the next step in my career. They are also clear on what I have to do to get a bonus and raise. Training? Yes. Conferences, webinars, classes at nearby colleges and monthly, internal training sessions are all funded and highly encouraged for every employee. There is no reason other than laziness for an employee to not be improving their skills. Flexible? Yes. Working from home is possible and encouraged when it makes sense. There are multiple employees that work remotely full-time as well. Need to take a kid, dog or car to the doctor, vet or garage? No problem. Do it when it makes sense. No timeclocks. No punchcards. Just keep track of your job time and everything is good. This is how modern businesses should work. It's not about having someone under your thumb at a desk all day. It's about doing awesome work. Now, the fun stuff... The lunch room is stocked! We have premium coffee all day long, a cereal bar, a soda fountain and a huge widescreen TV with cable. All free. Seriously. It's awesome. There's a full bar downstairs. You heard me right. A bar. A pub. Downstairs. Beer. Wine. Weekly beer and wine clubs. Oldschool, standup arcade. Ping-pong table. Wii. Widescreen TV with every hookup you can imagine (appletv, chromecast, etc...). The owner is Irish so I think that about sums it up. There's quarterly company-wide outings and various events. Corn mazes, city-wide scavenger hunts, St. Paddy's potato carvings, Valentine's Day card passing and Easter Peep hunting (find the peep in the office and win $50!) Every event is highly encouraged and fun. It's a business, so when you clear everything off the top of the heap, it's going to come down to money. Clients get catered; work gets tough. There's always going to be outliers who make things rough. With that said, I'm very satisfied with my employment at Hart.
Cons
Yep, negatives. Benefits (healthcare/insurance). It's a small company, so the benefits are weak if you're used to corporate benefits. They aren't bad, and with the whole hullabaloo in the US surrounding healthcare, sometimes I feel like it's just good to still HAVE them. They do have a 401k that Hart contributes to. Pay. Maumee is not Ann Arbor, Columbus or even Detroit. Pay is not the same. So expectations have to be reasonable. It's going to be lower. On the flip-side, cost of living is lower. Communication. Email, internal web platforms, phone, voicemail, text messaging, IM, verbal, paper... With no consolidated method of communication, it regularly takes extra time to keep track of what's going on around me. Sometimes a deadline or a project suffers when I miss a voicemail because everyone else on the project was using text messaging. I know this is 2014 and I have to be flexible to all the new technology, but I think Hart could definitely benefit from a better system of internal communication. Turnover. It feels like the turnover rate at Hart is really high. They are actively combating this with the Pros above, but I think it has yet to be seen if they are successful. As bad as it seems for the segment Hart is in, it's probably better or on average with the industry.
