Generally, I think working in this capitalistic hellscape is brutal, however, with my weird luck in life, I have found a company that deserves its kudos. Haven't been able to write this, but as I am currently expecting my baby to be born any day now, I've found time during bedrest.
TLDR at bottom.
General background:
I work from home in America for a small “technical content development” company that has always been remotely functioning. We have 12 full-time employees and about 20-30 vendors at any given time. They were hit hard by COVID and a couple of bad employees as I was being hired but still managed to stay afloat and not reduce anyone's pay. My title is a Business Specialist, but really, I do everything from contracting to automation services to invoice and timesheet reconciliation. There are 3 owners of the company and I work directly with them, working some weeks well below my salaried time and then other weeks I work 10 hour days. Even though I know I am the lowest paid employee, I still feel very satisfied with my work and its pace.
Why I think they do it right:
When I was first interviewed about 1 1/2 years ago, I thought this company was a scam. They pay 100% for employee health insurance, which isn't the cheap-o insurance and actually covers a lot of my needs. They offered 3 weeks of vacation time a year, plus voting day, your birthday, 1 cultural day, and the major federal holidays.
Before COVID times, they did profit sharing and paid out bonuses. However, they fell into the red during COVID so they could no longer do that and didn't have the funds to give a raise to employees. INSTEAD, they compromised and took employee feedback into consideration, ending up with us having 4-day work-weeks without reduction in pay. They checked in the first few weeks to make sure we weren't being overwhelmed. For me, a 4-day workweek is awesome, because it means I will spend less on daycare when my baby is born.
They treat me like a human being and when I was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum during the first 3 months of my pregnancy, my coworkers checked in with me and asked me how they could help. When I could barely lift my head, much less get to the computer, my boss would check in and see if I needed my meetings canceled. They would always tell me “take the time you need.” They threw a virtual baby shower for me and spent quite a bit on items from my registry. One day I received a money bouquet from the company to help cover medical expenses. I ugly cried over the amount of money and how that's worth 3 months of medical expenses.
When the insurrection was occurring on Jan. 6th, the bosses told everyone to go spend time with their family because we had no idea what was going to happen.
Since I know everyone's pay, I know I get paid the least in the company, but it doesn't bother me. I know they can't afford to give me a raise, partly because the bosses are open about company finances with employees and partly because I have access to the books to know where we stand income-wise. We're finally pulling income and doing well, just waiting until we are in the black to ask for more pay.
I am lucky enough to live in a state with paid medical and family leave. I started leave this week and won't be returning to work for about 4 months. One of the bosses lives close enough to me she offered to take me to Costco if I ever need baby items in bulk during my leave.
TLDR: The company I work for is a good one. They pay for employee health insurance, give adequate time off, are flexible for human needs, are open about finances, and treat employees as humans and not just profit robots. When they couldn't give us raises, they reduced our workweek to 4 days without reducing pay while making sure we weren't overwhelmed.