1. Chaotic Leadership - Phreesia’s CEO is chaotic, unprofessional, and unreasonably demanding. His leadership style frequently creates internal chaos and instability - teams are constantly refocused or restructured in order to support his new direction (or whim). The leadership team tries their best to control his worst impulses and mitigate the chaos he creates, but an inordinate amount of energy is spent managing around him. Many VPs are frightened of the CEO and will bend to his requests, regardless of the impact it has to their teams or customers. Whole days can be spent completing research based on an off hand request from the CEO - Directors and VPs will rush to move resources around in order to complete these requests, only for the question/issue/idea to never come up again. Evening leadership meetings are a requirement and frequently have leaders scrambling on the day of their meeting to coach employees, prepare material, and prepare back up material in case the CEO is in a bad mood (once the call starts, it’s not uncommon for one of the more senior leaders in the room to tell their team that the CEO sounds like he’s in a bad mood and to get ready). Phreesia wastes so much energy catering to their CEO, his moods, his whims, and his opinions. The panic that comes over their VPs faces when he emails or calls them out of the blue isn’t normal.
2. Company Culture (or lack thereof) - Phreesia’s founders don’t believe in “manufactured culture”. They approach company culture as an organic development. This might have been effective when the company was under 100 employees. In their earlier days, the employees they hired had similar work ethic, backgrounds, and motivations. But, as they grew, this was no longer entirely true and there became no overarching company culture for new employees to tap into. There are no core values that all employees could name, let alone uphold. Additionally, and most concerning, the approach to “organic” culture means that negative company culture can permeate if there are a few leaders that promote that kind of environment (lack of empathy, bullying, lack of respect, public shaming/ call outs, blame culture, etc.). Those leaders, that have brought with them negative company culture or leadership tactics, create a toxic workplace.
3. Toxic Workplace - Phreesia is an “always on” company. People are sending emails as early as 5 am and as late as midnight and they are often expecting an immediate response. Feelings of guilt creep into many employees daily lives - they’re worried that they aren’t seen as doing enough, achieving enough, or being available enough. It’s not uncommon to see people in the office from 8am-7pm. The message from management is always “you don’t need to work that long/ that many hours” but they are setting the example by being there, and available, at all hours. A normal work week for many gets close to 60 hours per week, with more hours expected during busy periods. History has also shown that those people who only work a 45 hour week don’t get promoted or praised. They don’t get opportunities. Favouritism is real at Phreesia. If you’re not liked, you aren’t getting ahead. Even if you’re qualified, doing excellent work, and taking on the responsibilities of a more senior position, if you’re not a favourite you’ll never make it. Some directors have spent months trying to get people’s opinions to change on certain employees in order to get them promoted. They deserved the promotions and were great employees but if senior leadership has a negative opinion it can be almost impossible to move that person ahead.
4. Performance Management - Phreesia’s performance management culture is extreme. Missed objectives mean performance plans. Note, it isn’t a “trend of missed objectives” - a single missed objective is enough to get someone on a level one performance plan (not always, but this does happen). This has been true across the organization, from SDRs, Client Success, Client Services, etc. This is not an isolated departmental issue. There is always a focus on the “bottom 10%” of performers company wide. The question to managers isn’t “How can we help this employee succeed? What do they need help with and how can we get that for them?”, it’s “What are you doing to get them out or make sure they're performing above plan? When will you put them on a performance plan? What month do you think they will be termed?”. These are conversations all managers, directors, and VPs are having. The pressure on middle management to clear out their “bottom 10%” is felt by the employees. Most employees, who aren’t part of the favoured few, constantly fear for their jobs. They see their coworkers terminated with no communication from management beyond the fact that the performance management process was followed. This has a devastating impact on morale. It also contributes to their high attrition rate - no one wants to stay at a company where they don’t see stability. Monthly “flight risk” meetings are a common occurrence for most department managers. Most employees are, at minimum, casually interviewing. Phreesia is keeping other tech company recruiters busy.
5. Communication and Transparency - Phreesia has a communication problem. Either information is not communicated, communicated ineffectively, or communicated with little to no lead time to make an impact/ alter decisions. There’s very little transparency into the decision making processes which leaves employees feeling destabilized and in the dark. Phreesia promotes that they are “Always Changing” but offer very little reasoning behind their changes. This creates mass confusion, gaps in processes, and fear - instead of communicating why a change is happening, how it will happen, and when it will happen, employees are frequently told “this is how we’re doing this now” and don’t get an opportunity to ask questions, learn the process, or address concerns. Communication happens in silos, with almost no collaboration or shared messaging. It is not uncommon for there to be more than one team tackling the exact same problem/ creating the exact same new process. It’s a waste of time and frustrates employees.
6. Little Opportunity for Growth (in Ottawa) - Ottawa based roles have little opportunity for growth. The expectation is that most people hired into jobs in Ottawa will stay 18-24 months and move on (with even higher attrition rates expected from early career employees). If you’re hired in Ottawa don’t expect many opportunities to move around the company or to try new jobs - they don’t exist for Ottawa based employees. There has long been a perception that the Ottawa office will eventually be closed. Many in Ottawa believe that the Ottawa team is perceived as junior, undereducated, and less capable than the American teams. Leadership creates this perception and it infuses most cross-functional team interactions. The Ottawa team is filled with smart, talented people who don’t get a chance to show their strengths.
