travailleur en construction générale

assistant manager

Calgary Alpha House Society

One of the first things I was told when I began my job at Alpha House was that there was an incredibly high turn-over rate; the going estimate at that time (on average) was 3-6 months for my role. Of course, the job is by nature very challenging mentally, and you will witness and experience traumatic events working here—that is a given. However, I believe that the way this organization is run is also a contributing factor. 

The on-boarding for my position was not well executed. I did not receive an onboarding presentation until nearly three months into my position. This presentation covered a lot of important information, like a recommendation to get a Hepatitis C vaccine and TB skin test before starting work. If you have these before your start date and become sick with either over the course of your employment, your treatment is covered by Worker’s Compensation. I was not advised of this until the presentation. The presentation was also where scheduling was explained to new hires. There are some quirky scheduling practices here (like being scheduled for days outside your contracted hours unless you explicitly block them off), so this would have saved me some difficulty had I gotten this information when I first started.

I want to be clear that many of the people working for Alpha House are good at their jobs and are there trying to make a positive impact.  However, there does seem to be a culture where yelling at clients in order to "stand up for yourself" is seen as the correct response. In my experience, if you took a gentler approach, recognizing that clients often aren’t mad at you, just their situation, people would see you as allowing clients to "walk all over you". I was frequently told that because of my softer approach and the fact that I thought talking to clients was the best part of my job, I would be better suited in another area and not the shelter side for which I had been hired. There are also some frustrations with management and HR seeming to be far-removed from the experiences of front-line staff, especially if you are at the Lethbridge location, where there is no dedicated HR office. For example, I was never introduced to my manager as a weekend worker.

Whether the rate of pay for Addiction Support Workers is equitable is another matter to consider. If you work on a casual, part-time, or full-time basis, you will make a different hourly wage for the same position. At the time of my employment, this put casual workers somewhere between the $19-20 mark. I think the logic behind this may be that full-time workers deal with a lot more work-related stress with so many shifts one after another. However, in my experience casual workers pick up so many shifts to cover staffing shortages that they are working just as often, and often deal with a lot more switching between areas and day/night shifts. The same can be said for part-time workers who pick up shifts, but they are also a bit closer to the full-time rate of pay. That is definitely something to consider if you are hired here.

Lastly, I want to be clear about some of the things you are likely to experience at this job: responding to multiple overdoses a shift, breaking up fights, being threatened or intimidated, witnessing human suffering, and experiencing the loss of clients. While support is made available through online counselling, this is not a job you will soon forget, although there will be things that you wish you could. I would not recommend taking this job unless you have a good support network and know how to take care of your own mental wellbeing. By the end of my employment with Alpha House, I felt traumatized (in a very literal sense) and as if everything I had done had gone unnoticed and unappreciated by management. My only solace was knowing that I had made some positive connections with clients and staff during my time there.

At the Alpha House you are a just number. Critical events will occur and instead of management making sure you are okay, they will negatively criticize you and make you question your decisions. You will never be given positive acknowledgement for doing a good job. Administrative staff and upper management are completely tone deaf as to what is happening to the actual frontlines. They never consult any staff members before making changes. They have a high rate of turn over. Human Resources are completely useless and don't understand any of the roles involved in the organization. Majority of the time people do not show up for their shifts. It used to be an okay place to work till they fired everyone and rehired people not appropriate for their roles.
They put untrained people in very dangerous working situations.
They have no accountability for their worker's health. 
They totally choose favourites so it's hard to experience any upward movement unless you are "one of the chosen few". An unhealthy work culture where everyone is being thrown under the bus. If you want to truly help people do not work here. Your career will be short and miserable. It will turn you off of harm reduction forever.

Great experience to get social work or patient care experience. You learn how to manage or at least witness complex mental and physical health problems with your clients. The people who you work with can also carry you through those difficult shifts. 
Having supportive leadership is paramount to the work we do. However, it did feel like management did not truly understand our day-to-day processes.  There is a disconnect between front-line and management, which is typical in some social services work, but then ultimately impacts frontline workers and consequently, the clients suffer. Our workers need  much more mental health support, which is difficult to obtain and access, even with the EAP Program 

Also training - while there are opportunities to earn training credits, you depend on other previous ASWs or caseworkers to show you the ropes, which adds more pressure to the already stressful work they do. As a trainee, your training experience is shorthanded. Training should be set and standardized by management from the moment of hire. That way, all workers receives the same and adequate amount of training to perform everywhere.
Processes need to be standardized, documented, and communicated to.all PSH buildings so there are no gaps of the standard of operation.

Administration has very little concept of the big picture.  The entire Agency operates as if each department is a separate entity.  Their volunteer program leaves something to be desired.  Unqualified Administration staff who all lack experience often creates pandemonium for the Agency.

Any suggestions towards improvement were shut down immediately by senior staff and were never considered.  "It works the way it is right now" is the statement, even though it does not engage with new governmental policies and procedures.  If they get a payroll or Revenue Canada audit they will be in deep trouble.

I feel that I have been taught bad procedures by this employer and am in the process of trying to forget them.

The only great thing about Alpha House is the Detox program and staff.  They really care about the clients and appear to go above and beyond normal duties.

I felt the need to write a review, as the ones I just read do not represent what me and most of my co-workers experience.  Yes, the work can be hard, stressful and challenging, but if you have a great Team lead, they will train you well and will be there to listen when you need it. I have met all the Managers, and they all seem great, I have never experienced anything but friendliness from them.  As far as HR goes, it was pretty hit and miss when I started but things have a gotten a lot better in the last couple of years.  I actually get a performance review now, and I am jealous of those who got one at the end of their probation . 

Incredible rewarding but difficult job made impossibly by a lack of adequate top down support. Everyone is burnt out and broken. No one leaves Alpha unscathed.  The work is incredibly challenging and impossible to sustain in the type of environment created by the employer.  Working here, you see and often experience a lot of death, all types of assault, and various trauma which is mishandled by direct Team Leads (who are just as burnt out).  The giant gap between front line and management is the problem, and all of the responsibilities are placed on team leads who aren't any more prepared than the staff they oversee.

I learned so much from the clients and I have taken that with me to other jobs. 

People move around a lot, so there’s always positions coming up. 

I never felt valued by management or my team lead. It’s super clique-y; if you get in good with certain people you’ll go far in the organization. 

They do have some pretty interesting programs, but always short staffed. I felt like I was enabling people a lot (ex. Giving them cigarettes for cleaning their room???) 

The people you work with on the floor are always great, some of the best people I've worked with. Management is okay. There's not enough training for what you're expected to deal with and it's kind of hard to de-escalate when no one has taught you how to do so so you make things up as you go to see what works and what doesn't. There's a lot of stress around whether you'll have enough people working during your shift and sometimes everyone will call out the night before they have to work and you show up the next day and you are literally the only person there until they panic find more people to fill in. 

Workplace culture is honestly horrible. Manager never acknowledges you or really says hi. To be honest a manager caring about their workers makes one want to work there and be committed to the job but manager in housing doesn't really seem interested in their workers. Which can make you feel that it doesn't matter if you stay or quit. Turn over is really high and it seems that this company doesn't listen to concerns and suggestions of staff. This sucks because the company does important work and the high turnover ultimately affects the cients.

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Travailleur en construction générale 2 salaries reported	$54,634 per year
Assistant manager 1 salary reported	$26.81 per hour

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