service technician

maintenance technician

construction superintendent

community manager

construction project manager

St Pauls Senior Services

This company is ever changing it's policies but not for the benefit of their employees and is always of a selfish manner. Some of the policies are in violation of state guidelines for employees and quite frequently you are worrying if you are even going to be able to keep your job as they put unrealistic deadlines to have them signed by with a threat of you losing your job if they aren't. Those individuals that do NOT exceed at their job are easily moved up in the company by kissing the butt of the manager above them while those of us who go above and beyond are tossed aside and are made to feel in-valued. Too many chiefs as protocol is to contact direct manager but they never answer their phones or return emails leaving deadlines uncompleted- ultimately placing blame on you. When the company is wanting to save money they save it in their own pockets and require their employees to spend more out of theirs. Bonuses are almost non existent and are based on property appearance when they allow you next to nothing for a budget to maintain it. The benefits of PTO are next to nothing until you have worked for them over 2 years, while Regional positions and corporate office individuals get an automatic amount and still incur more daily. You sign a contract stating your job duties and then upper management constantly changes it. Hired into a position and have been maintaining many locations many positions and am only being paid for the one i actually signed a contract for. Corporate office is undoubtedly unaware as the upper management wants to make themselves look good and reprimands you if you reach out to any one above them. New higher level management speaks to everyone rudely, without care and completes their position to better themselves and not the for the employees handling day to day situations and are taking the blunt of the work. Whatever you do constantly put it in writing even if it is in an email and PRINT PRINT PRINT. Too many trying to keep salary paid positions by lying to their staff or to upper management about where the blame needs to be placed while those who work hourly for next to nothing are taking the hit. Most work goes through vendors but if they are not available in your area you are completely out of luck and will get no help in finding one. Files are not well maintained at most sites but when audits are completed the manager is to fix all of the issues with no help even if the file precedes their employment date. If a disgruntled tenant reaches out to the corporate office with a complaint it filters through 5 different levels and instead of getting to the bottom of the situation by speaking with the employee you are reprimanded by email and it is copied to 10 other individuals though the situation is not as it was reported and there is documentation to follow through with it.

My impression as a new hire is that Woda has had poor employee morale in the past and is actively working to fight that, with a new ESOP structure in 2018, and perks like 50% paid-for gym memberships and a masseuse coming to the office.  I can't speak to the experience of property managers, who work on-site, but I have had a wonderful experience being based out of the Columbus headquarters.  I have teammates who are happy to help.  People talk and joke throughout the day while being professional.  You're free to put on headphones/shut your office door and not engage if you want to.  I'm not micromanaged but am given enough guidance and resources.  People used to being micromanaged might find this to be disorienting, however. Woda has paid for my online continuing education courses and offers (lengthy but worthwhile) in-office learning sessions about green building best practices and other relevant topics.  Note that no approached me suggesting I take these online courses -- I took the initiative.

The vertically-integrated nature of the company (development, construction, and property management working in the same office, with PCI, the architecture firm, one floor below) creates an open, communicative environment.  People will typically walk across the office and just ask someone from another division a question, rather than going through a formal process.  I've worked in an office environment where everyone was off in their own pod, doing their own task, and this isn't like that.  I work in construction, but had a suggestion for the development division, and it was listened to and tested for feasibility.   

The number of PTO days (12) isn't remarkable, but the management is understanding about half-days that might be needed, and will let you make up the time, rather than using PTO hours.  I haven't encountered pressure to work overtime.   (Your experience may vary, depending on which team you're on.)  You may be required to travel, depending on your position, but hotels, food, and travel are fairly and efficiently comped.   There are many new hires and a new office, so the company culture may feel a less personal with so many new people.   I feel that there is good opportunity for me to advance -- even across divisions while staying at the Columbus HQ -- based on my conversations with managers and during the hiring process, but only time will bear out whether that's the case.

Working at Woda was fun, exciting, and beneficial for me. I had a very small team and went through 3 supervisors during my yr. There is high turnover in certain positions that I saw. In my department some went for better opportunities(like myself) and other personal, nothing widely out of the ordinary. I noticed during my time at woda many complaints about things that employees had no control over. EVERY job has its ups and downs. Each of my supervisors were supportive of me and allowed me to work flexible schedule when needed. The work was simplistic if you have good sense and work ethic. I never had any real issues at Woda with any of the staff. The owners were friendly and so were the ppl. As a minority and a person of color I did see a lack of diversity in leadership. I was only there for a year so I am unsure if there were ppl of color in "high places". I was able to seek counsel, advice, and answers about work when needed. I worked in the corporate office and if I have the chance to work back at Woda in the future out of all of the places I have worked it would be my first option. Mgmt was always there to assist if my sup couldnt provide an answer right away. I received the answer as soon as she did either by working together to get it or if I found out first sharing it with her. 
Woda is doing a decent job in trying to keep good morale and workplace culture. I never experienced any first hand poor mgmt or cultural problems in the workplace. 
The hardest part of the job was "putting out fires". Sometimes everything seemed to be and emergency but in reality it wasnt. But that a part of working on time constraints and different personalities. The most enjoyable part of the job was co-workers and the laid back environment. Ive recommended friends and family to work here. Go to work, do your job, and stay out of mess, you'll have success.

As an ST do not think that its going to be what they described. I was told it was going to be repairing small house old repairs and maintaining the grounds. In turn I was required to do general construction (good thing I had that in my knowledge base) rewire fixture, run electrical, and much much more while still maintaining the grounds. There is not enough time in the week to complete all that needs to be done when you ask for overtime that tell you no and expect you to take shortcuts to fix problems. ( for example I witnessed an ST repair a bathtub diverted valve with silicone a week later I was doing it the right way because it failed causing more of a problem then it has stated it to be) they allow the renters to trash the homes and not hold them responsible for the damages then get mad at the ST because they budget is blown within the first six months. Not to mention if you need something to complete your job ie. power tools good luck you better have your own. They tell you up front all you need for the job is a basic set of hand tools. But I don’t know to many people that would be replacing subfloors, hanging drywall, changing out hot water tanks, and much much more with just basic hand tools. I would stay away from this job at all costs. Oh and by the way your benefits are junk unless you work at corporate the field guy  benefits you can’t afford you are better off finding it privately and your on call 24-7 that means you will and I have been called any day of the week at anytime and you are not paid to be on call unless you are called out. ( I had to leave my family on Christmas Day because some dummy opened their sliding glass door so hard they jammed it in the tracks and couldn’t get it to close. They were letting their dog out that they were not allowed to have! Nothing happened to the tenant!) Do not work for this company they are junk!

Very poorly ran. little to almost NO training, they just throw you in to learn on your own and if you have questions (if they do answer) they just tell you to look on their policy website... they do NOTHING to fix the issues on their properties and a lot of their buildings are falling apart, it falls on the community managers shoulders and makes them look bad when in reality they’re trying but can’t do anything without approval from corporate. 

I love the job, helping people is so rewarding (for the most part). But the lack of... well everything, makes it so hard to do your job and actually enjoy doing it. 

Some of the offices on site are completely unbareble and unacceptable. But they don’t care up in their comfy expensive corporate office!!! If you can’t enjoy your workspace you won’t enjoy doing your work!

It is very stressful, overwhelming and sometimes flat out not worth the headache!

They never hire service techs yet wonder why things aren’t getting done. 

Higher ups talk down to you and treat you with so much disrespect. If they got out of their cozy corporate office and actually visited their sites maybe they’d understand things a little better. 

The pay is not worth it. They expect too much, and don’t give you enough.

Be prepared to work 7 days a week and be expected to respond to their every beck and call 24 hours a day or face consequences. It’s not uncommon for regionals and district managers to be responsible for 10-20 communities and if they are short staffed your expected to run them and do your normal job as well. Employee moral is horribly low and rightfully so. There’s zero communication, constant changes in policies that make no sense but create way more work for those at site level. Getting approval and answers through the chain of command is almost impossible. Things are pushed off until they turn into big problems and tenants and staff suffer because of this. No one wants to take responsibility and upper management at the corporate office and regional level will throw you under the bus to avoid consequences in a heart beat. Many employees live in constant fear of losing their jobs on a daily basis due to the threats and unrealistic expectations of upper management. Not only will you be expected to do your job but also the job of several others with poor compensation and not even a thank you. Several people at the corporate office are clueless and others with no idea of what they are doing move up the ladder very quickly due to who they know.

Training to do an extremely difficult job is 1 1/2 days at the corporate office where you'll recieve a binder filled with information you don't understand and words and lingo you've never heard before that you'll be expected to absorb during a bullet point series of power point presentations that are shoved diwn your throat at Mach 5 speed. Within a week or two you'll start getting threatening emails from accounting & compliance about reports & budgets, then you're upper management  will jump down your throat for those and other reports that, keep in mind, you don't know how to do and nobody is coming to help you. You'll also likely get HUD violations and won't know what do do about them. You'll also get to spend hours, days weeks, on new tenant move in files that don't get approved by compliance for petty reasons. Evicting families at or around the holidays and all other times of the year will happen. Turnover is a constant so you should never be under assumption you'll have others to count on for any length if time, also, if you earn a bonus, you probably will never see it. Tenants with roaches, bedbugs & fleas and etc will visit your office exposing you.

Corporate was very closed minded when it came to listening to any concerns about a workplace conflict.   The Erie region has an extremely unprofessional supervisor who, often, was passive aggressive and very difficult to communicate with.   They were also very ignorant to the actual job duties a maintenance technician has, and how those duties were performed, and the expected timeframes for those duties.  They also provide little to no assistance for said duties.  Hours would be cut at the end of the week if there was even just 1 hour of overtime due to being called in after hours for an emergency.  No rewards for going above and beyond for the company.   No acknowledgement for hard work, even with perfect scores for state inspections.  All together this is the worst company I've ever worked for to date, and they did not care at all about any of my valid concerns, and they treated it as a nuisance problem whenever I would try to communicate any issues.   

I was employed with the company for 4 years. It was a love hate kind of relationship. I loved the job and the service it provided to people in the area. My District and Regional Managers were great, easy to contact and always willing to give direction with no attitude or issue. Compliance department was a bit tough to work with at times. Lots of changes both with policies and procedures and management. Hated Audit time, hated their employee policies in some areas while other areas of it were basic common sense. Management ability to manage the site is very limited due to yellow tape, state requirements and tenant compliance and their love of screaming law suit and calling legal aid because everything is discrimination to them. Hardest part of the position is keeping the files within compliance guidelines and getting the tenants to come into the office to do their paperwork. Very stressful position!!

Employees in higher management positions are allowed to disrespect, belittle, make for a hostile environment for lower position employees. Upper level employees doing shorty work and  not reprimanded for it. Leaving others to clean up after them. Upper management hiring family and than covering up for them if their work is unexceptable. Upper managements  expects hi quality work from their employees. But their quality of work  isn’t not of top quality. Service Texh said says since they are tax credit property they don’t deserve top quality housing.  Upper management cusses a lot. Emails go unanswered, no supplies to do job, area supervisors in disputes with each other. One of my first encounters with area supervisor, I was told to watch what I say  to a certain employee because she was someone in higher management snitch/ right hand man.  This said person  doesn’t do her job and went caught tries to put the blame on others. Very loud and disrespectful. She should not be in a higher position they way she talks and treats people

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Service technician 1 salary reported	$24.00 per hour
Maintenance technician 1 salary reported	$18,225 per year
Construction superintendent 19 salaries reported	$88,756 per year
Community manager 4 salaries reported	$23.88 per hour
Construction project manager 6 salaries reported	$64,167 per year

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