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American Red Cross

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American Red Cross reviews

3.3

50% would recommend to a friend

(4,614 total reviews)
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Gail McGovern

70% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

American Red Cross has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 4,614 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The American Red Cross employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the ONG y Organizaciones sin fines de lucro industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

5K reviews
1.0
Apr 12, 2014

Run the other way

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Seeing and hearing from the people who have benefited from receiving blood products.

Cons

Everything else. Insane working hours (I once went an entire month without a single day off; regularly worked nights, too). No work/life balance (it's required that you still check and respond to emails while on PTO). Absolutely no management support. The Red Cross wants you to think it's a noble organization, but the blood services side is completely based off sales (the Red Cross makes money off of blood donations!). No consistency when it comes to company practices; local offices operate under the "don't ask for permission now rather forgiveness later" mentality. Completely resistant to change; no one like new ideas so no room to grow. Sales reps (Donor Recruitment reps) are bullies and get away with everything because they pass it off that they need to make goal. Of course, they are commission-based so it's not about helping others, it's about helping themselves.

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American Red Cross Response
12y
We appreciate your review, and are glad to hear you found it rewarding to interact directly with those who benefited from blood products. We are also sorry to hear your comments regarding work/life balance and management. We agree that both of these factors are crucial to employee satisfaction and fostering a positive workplace environment, and will pass your feedback on to our leadership team. A point of clarification: Blood that we collect from our donors is sold to hospitals and health care organizations; the profits from this exchange are used to support the mission of the Red Cross. More information about our financials and spending can be found at charitynavigator.org
1.0
Sep 21, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Perhaps there are better jobs outside of the collections department. Many people who start in collections stick with it long enough to work in a different department and seem happy, but very few people work long-term in collections.

Cons

I heard jokes and offensive comments about women, jews, rape, black people, hispanics, etc without fail every single week from staff there. Several from my trainers, one who expressed that "men are just better than women" to a group of trainees, including myself. I spoke up about it and nothing was done. I came from a hospital background and found that most instructors had no technical knowledge of how blood products are actually used medicinally. My instructor fell asleep on the first day of teaching us about our job at the company, and his boss came in the room and thought it was funny. No one in management could figure out where one employee (who had to commute for mandatory training) was supposed to clock in, and the issue was not resolved for months. When I got fed up and quit there wasn't anyone to actually quit to that day, so I sent an email to their concerns group about why I was quitting. HR routinely leaves every friday, and sure enough they were gone before 2 pm that day, so I couldn't even quit to them.They sent me a letter saying I had been terminated for not showing up, the next week, even though I had quit and told them so. The sheer incompetency of every single department was apparent to me while working there. The additional week meant they subtracted 400$ from my remaining checks (their insurance is EXPENSIVE and not good). My first check was full, for one week of work, but every check after that retroactively subtracted additional pay for benefits, even though I didn't have my cards yet. When I called to ask how to get my money back for the last month of checks no one knew who to talk to. The collections department is not allowed to have breaks longer than 30 minutes, even when working long shifts, which seems as though it is illegal.

1.0
Jul 1, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-you get paid to travel, if it takes an hour to get to the job site, you get that hour at your pay rate -coworkers can be fun -when it's slow, you get paid to do nothing

Cons

-for a job thats supposed to be non-profit, they sure care a lot about making money -management blatantly just does not care about employees -rules rules rules rules rules -pay is only ok -when it's busy, it feels like a constant dinner rush at a fast food restaurant -rarely does someone compliment you on your hard work, most people (donors, sponsors, management, donor recruitment, everyone) looks at us like gears in a machine. -late ending drive (not home till 10) followed by a start time of 6 AM the next day. -drives are constantly understaffed, goals seem to be set unrealistically -I'm a male, so it rarely effects me, but some coworkers constantly gossip about each other, and go out of their ways to make each others lives miserable. -management tries to get you to work harder by using guilt and fear. -constantly given new "best practices" and "corrective actions" to fix an error rate of literally .001% (a "trend" is when 4 or more "problems" are detected in a couple of months, when we can do as many as 4000 procedures a month) -staff are treated as children, with constant micromanagement, and tons of rules, by management that has absolutely no idea how the process works. - (non-needle/blood bag) equipment is outdated and sometimes downright broken, making the easy part of the job sometimes harder than necessary. -constantly told "you're helping to save lives!" to try and make the work experience seem worth it all, but actions speak louder than words.

Viewing 109 - 111 of 4,614 Reviews

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