Pros
Great benefits package and pension Central location close to Union Station, St Lawrence Market, restaurants, etc Free tickets (although there's a weird culture around asking for them)
Cons
Executive Team Catty. Very catty. The only executive I didn’t experience this behaviour from was the VP of St Lawrence Centre Redevelopment. I spent my tenure at TO Live listening to VP’s complain about doing menial tasks (guest list creation for example - not a sympathetic cause when you make twice as much as your reporting staff), talking over each other for the entirety of 10+ people meetings, giving absolutely no direction, making no decisions, and leaving their staff to execute half thought out plans with no respect for that staff member’s expertise. Because all meetings had no agenda, no objective, and upper management arguing over each other all the time, it was impossible to get anything done. The following meeting would be a repeat of the same because of the lack of clarity. Getting the smallest projects off the ground was near impossible. More importantly, the mental health implications of being surrounded by this type of negativity takes a massive toll for even the strongest person. Ultimately, I didn’t think I could trust any of upper management. It felt as if they’d go to lunch and gossip about their staff. I’m not sure if others had this feeling. You can imagine how bad morale is before even reading the rest of this review. DE&I I’m still wracking my brain as to how a company established in 2019, in one of the most diverse cities in the world, has an almost entirely white executive team. They recently hired a BIPOC VP of HR who seemed completely overworked from the day she started. Having faced more than my share of racism and prejudice in my career, I can’t imagine any person of colour feeling supported here. The executive team seems very proud of their mission to involve diverse artists in their programming, but have absolutely no regard for the wellbeing of diverse staff they work with every day. This is the worst company I’ve worked for in terms of casual racism, inappropriate comments about mental health (TW suicide), tokenism, and lack of education, resources, or consequences for this kind of behaviour. The CEO does not know how to navigate tough questions and really doesn’t seem interested in learning how. Several times, controversial programming decisions were justified as “freedom of speech” rather than xenophobic rhetoric. Unacceptable. Company Direction There is none. TO Live had consultants come in and review/suggest direction. It was purposely ignored. Post pandemic, funds are scarce. They're treading water with a roster that doesn't have experience or interest in improvement. I’d also like to draw attention to the fact that TO Live is an arm of the city of Toronto. Why is a city owned company fundraising? Shouldn’t the city be fully funding their own company? Culture Not surprisingly, again, there is none. After a social committee was suggested by an employee (not an executive or HR member), their expertise in running such a committee was questioned, there was no support in getting it off the ground, and ultimately they still don’t have a social committee. Tip of the iceberg here, as you can imagine. Just stay away. Far away. They’re very lucky to have an amazing production crew and a very lovely HR specialist conducting interviews.
