3 Mar 2015
Sweetwater Response
11yThanks so much for the great review. As this indicates, we significantly raised our rates of pay this month, which is the normal time for us to do so each year. On average the vast majority of our employees who were meeting or exceeding our expectations received annual increases about 25% higher than the 2015 national average. We further upped the ante on this with our lowest paid hourly employees, many of whom received a very significant pay increase over and above what we did for more tenured employees. These significant pay increase didn't come from a pool of money taken away from other employees but rather came directly from the profits of the company. Our senior management team here simply wanted to let our hourly team (many of whom are in entry level jobs) know they are appreciated, that we'd love them to have a long term career here, and that our hope is that this will make their lives a little easier. It's been met with incredibly positive responses. As we have continued our rapid growth, we have also promoted a number of employees in these areas over the past six months. I love the fact that this anonymous reviewer mentioned the "Sweetwater family." We are, indeed, a privately held, family owned business and try very very hard, even with almost 800 employees and growing rapidly, to nurture and encourage a small company family feel with all our employees.
Jeff McDonald, Senior VP of Human Resources