It's a huge red flag that Backroads seems to accept the turnover in their office staff as just the nature of the industry and appears not even to begin to question their management. The unilateral way of ruling the executive team has put in place, is often short sighted and protects their own interests, not their staff.
Propped up by excellent hiring and training, they have managed for years to get by on slotting highly capable individuals into key roles, but then burning them out with workloads, deadlines, and expectations that are quite frankly disrespectful. When these individuals ask for help, they get nothing, at best, or a guilt trip, at worst, and with few exceptions, they leave prematurely; only then do their roles get split or obtain additional support/resources. As the company has grown, these highly capable and experienced individuals are becoming too few for the number of roles that turn over, leading to a deterioration of workplace quality that is often manifested and measured through surveys, yet they care only about their bottom line. There seems to be very little logic as to who the favorites are, but performance certainly does not seem to be the highest priority. With regards to leaders, a very twisted marking system has been set up where guests score the leaders thinking said leaders will never see the feedback directly, when it actually gets sent straight to their mail box. The scoring system itself is based on likability rather than actually evaluating if leaders are good at their jobs. All the while Backroads prefers for leaders not to mention this yet pride themselves on transparency. The result is harmful attacks on the leaders’ morale, rather than constructive feedback.
The company loves using buzz words of empathy, radical candor, and being feedback based, to pretend that they have a caring and supportive company culture, but it is not something that matters, never acknowledging issues employees bring forward, with growth and profit being far and away their greatest values. Upper management is totally out of touch, existing in an insular bubble that quashes any criticism that they get wind of (this despite claiming that there will be no negative consequences to including one's name on the yearly employee survey instead of submitting anonymously). They continue, whether delusionally or manipulatively, to act as though employees should feel lucky to get what they give while continuing to be underpaid and undervalued. Loyalty does not exist as they try to create a "big happy family" atmosphere while on their end they show time and time again that they see their staff as easily replaceable, squeezing people out if they don't guzzle the Kool-Aid.
Furthermore, they have no qualms behaving in illegal manners across various payrolls, in an attempt to pay their employees at rebait. They engage in considerable gaslighting regarding pay, throwing nice-looking numbers around while keeping details opaque. On top of mediocre pay and complicated payment structures, numerous employees (a startling proportion of those who do the work to check) have managed to reclaim significant unpaid wages after investigating their pay slips.
It is difficult not to say that Backroads has a distinctly toxic company culture.
