I left Elder a few months ago and I have been reflecting on my time at the company. Where do I start.... Firstly, this is a very taxing industry but its not remotely easier by the shoddy management at Elder. The AE role in particular is extremely difficult due to having to deal with death, angry customers, upset carers/customers and generally everything in-between. To help with this, Elder brought in Spill, which is helpful, but it doesn't solve the fundamental issues. Upwards of 8 people in the last year either quit or taken a prolonged period of time off due to mental health issues. People in the role simply don’t want to be there. So many people go off work “ill” because they simply don’t want to be at work. What have Elder done to combat all of this bar spill....nothing would be my answer. Management have the mindset of "suck it up", rather than "how can I help". I went to my manager about a customer that I dread speaking to and I was told nothing could be done. It was soul destroying as I was asking for help and didn’t get any support.
I have also never worked in a customer service role where management are so scared to get on the phones and offer support to their staff, its embarrassing. There just isn't the support that there should be and it shows no signs of changing. There was only 1 manager that would genuinely support their staff and speak to customers on the phone and Elder let her go. It was ridiculous to everyone at Elder as she was the best manager they had!
Elder let go a number of staff just before Christmas, it was disgraceful. The most senior members of staff have next to no empathy for those who actually deal with the day to day. There is a remarkable disconnect between management and front line staff. Now for context, I have worked in several other start ups, so the excuse of "oh its a start up blah blah" is not a viable excuse. I feel a lot of this comes from the hire of a COO that has changed the already awful environment to an even worse place to work. I could write an essay on that point alone, but I won’t bore you with the details.
In my time at Elder, it could be nicely summarised as constantly chasing our tails. Everything is so reactive, rather than proactive. There is no forward thinking and the front line team are always the people that suffer the most.
The workload is already incredibly difficult and the news that AE's would go from 35/40 accounts to 60, sent a number of people onto Indeed, myself included. 60 accounts simply isnt feasible and anybody that actually did the role day in day out, would understand this. However, no one in the management team has actually spent a day as an AE, but they make decisions on what we can and cant do. This is further evidence of how backwards this company is.
I’ve seen a few comments about Elder asking for fake 5* reviews and I can confirm this is true. They are so worried that the truth about the company is seen, they ask employees to drown readers in fake positive reviews.
Apologies to anyone reading this, as this is a bit all over the place but there just so much I could write about this company. My advise would be to avoid Elder and find work elsewhere. I can assure you, if we hadn't been in a pandemic for the last few years, the staff turnover would be even worse than it already is.
