Pros
All in all, Decker is a mediocre company– there are some positives and several cons of working here. Personally, I would not recommend working here.
• Get to work with great clients + top companies (think blue chip companies all the way down to non-profits/startups) and help deal with their communication and business challenges. The client work is fantastic and engaging.
• Many of the team members at Decker are smart, genuine, and wonderful people that are lovely to work with.
Cons
• Culture: The other Glassdoor comments (spanning back to more than a decade) make this abundantly clear, but let me reinforce it once again:
The best way to describe the culture at Decker is TOXIC POSITIVITY. There’s a superficial veneer of openness, excitement, and inclusiveness at Decker. The honest truth is that it isn’t exactly that. Decker likes to promote the fact that it’s a progressive firm that promotes empathy, inclusivity, diversity, emotional safety, fairness, meaningful work – a company that anyone would love to work for. At times, it fulfills that commitment. But the deeper reality doesn’t really align to what it promotes. It takes some time to understand and see through that. Spending time there, you begin to see that it is more words than actions quite frankly. This is a major red flag. As long as you drink the “kool-aid” here and act like everything is wonderful and go about the “Decker” way while raving about it to your friends/family, you will be fine (sadly). Stay around long enough and you’ll realize very few things really change in a meaningful way and the company doesn’t actually prioritize all voices except a few.
The culture plays favorites – it’s clear there are employees who are considered favorites by leadership and are not held to the same standard and accountability as others/have access to information and conversations that others don’t. Their voice is included in various areas and others voices are not considered as highly. It’s extremely clear who the favorites are in this environment. This a highly frustrating and unfair aspect of working there.
The culture enables toxic team members to thrive and be rewarded. In my time at Decker, there were several team members that made disrespectful, insensitive, and rude/toxic remarks to not only myself, but other colleagues as well. When employees raised these issues, they (including myself) did not really feel heard or that anything significant was done about it. Senior colleagues who treat newer colleagues as inferiors, and are frankly condescending and highly toxic, should be removed – not promoted and rewarded at company events.
• Lack of HR procedures and processes – no real way to hold people accountable or to report HR violations that would be taken in an anonymous and serious way.
• Lack of consistent empathy – in a culture that supposedly highly values empathy and compassion, the actions don’t necessarily reflect it. E.g. team members being fired on the spot without even having a few days to say goodbye and process their termination or receive a few weeks of compensation to help them get through the layoff.
• Lack of creativity & depth: the materials, exercises, and workshops are recycled content for the last 2 decades with very few meaningful updates. It’s honestly pretty stale content as others have noted, while the company can act like they are selling God’s gift to the world.
The courses are helpful in developing your communication/presentation style but are limited, and the company doesn’t show that it really cares to create more creative and unique content. Additionally, the company culture as noted above can come across as superficial and lacking depth. People love to party and have fun, but there is a lack of consistent meaningful conversations and curiosity stemming from leadership that permeates throughout the organization.
• Sales based culture – everything is about the sale of workshops and consulting – which of course is how they make money. However, selling without appropriately understanding your clients’ needs and what can be realistically offered from a company perspective creates a disconnection in expectations as far as what clients expect and what is offered to them. Start selling more intentionally and actually take the time to refine your offerings and marketing approach.
• Lack of clear career progression – it’s small company (less than 50 people). There’s really not much opportunity for growth beyond your current role unless it’s about taking on more clients and different projects.
• Lack of diversity – the company likes to promote its diversity initiatives but there is a significant lack of diversity at the company, especially at the leadership level (sadly, it’s just really white). Also, there’s a clear lack of interest from leadership in really engaging in DEIB issues and work – which quite frankly isn’t surprising and often feels like it’s done to save face or in the guise of tokenism.
• Back Biting, Politics and Gossip – employees constantly negatively talk about leadership and other employees. My first experience upon receiving my job offer was negative comments about leadership from a fellow colleague (that’s a concerning way to start your new job). I find that leadership is clueless about this or doesn’t really want to do anything about it. Word travels fast in this company and gossip is very prominent. It feels like you are constantly playing politics, navigating cliques (feels like high school at times), favorites, and trying to understand who your friends and enemies are so you can survive/thrive. The company also doesn’t take feedback very seriously from what I see. There’s been a ton of feedback they have been given about their culture and improvements and I haven’t really seen much change.
• Compensation isn't amazing and has been stagnant for years/has not kept up with the times.
• Leadership – in my time there, the co-CEOs never once really reached out to me proactively outside of routine business meetings – that’s bad leadership and another red flag. You have a small company with a few dozen people – take the time out to actually meet with everyone on a monthly basis or even quarterly basis – it’s really not that difficult and will go to show you actually care about your employees and their experiences.