developmental service worker

case manager

therapist

mental health technician

behavioral specialist

Wasatch Behavioral Health

I worked at Wasatch for almost 10 years as a therapist. I’m about to spend several paragraphs talking about the things I didn’t like, but at the bottom I will list a few things that I did. 

And keep in mind that I am nowhere near a perfect employee because I have terrible organizational skills, so some of my perspectives might be skewed, but generally my supervisors and coworkers were impressed with the therapy I did and the care I showed to clients in going above and beyond for them. And keep in mind it has now been almost 5 years since I worked there, so I don’t know if things have improved—although what I hear from former coworkers is that things aren’t necessarily much better now. 

In the first few years of working there it was an excellent work environment, which made up for the fact that the people we helped in my department had a lot of difficulties mostly outside of their control (e.g., mental health issues, poverty, etc.). Compassion fatigue could happen if you weren’t practicing good self-care, but we had time for self-care. 

But then after I had been there for several years, to compensate for complicated reasons related to county government stuff, higher admin started requiring more and more productivity for the same money. Eventually I left because the work environment got more and more stressful. 

Productivity goals felt almost impossible to meet in a 40-hour work week. Medicaid (which was almost exclusively my department’s funding source) doesn’t allow you to charge clients for not showing up, so our late cancellation/no-show rates were often 15-30%. Or the clients showed up so late we could only bill for half the time. So either way it felt like we didn’t have much control over actually reaching our required 27.5-billed-hours-per-week requirement. It seemed like the only way to do it was to schedule 39 or 40 clients a week and hope that most of them showed up, but if all of them showed up you would end up feeling completely burned out. 

I felt like the managers over the individual programs were generally great and sympathetic to our plight (probably because they were therapists too and had to do therapy as part of their job). But I felt like that never did much good overall because of the attitudes of the higher administrators (that the program managers had to answer to). 

On top of that I had issues with how they calculated productivity. If you had to take the time off to go to the continuing education classes required to keep your therapeutic licensure every year, the productivity standards were not relaxed for that. So if you needed to take 2 or 3 (or more) days off for a training, you had to figure out how to fit that proportion of billed hours into other weeks to make up for the time you had off so you could maintain your 27.5-hour/week average. And if you weren’t meeting your productivity standard not only would the company not approve funding for your trainings, (so you had to pay for the trainings yourself), but they would force you to use your paid time off for the days you were gone at the trainings. So again, really hard to only work 40 hours/week.

And on top of everything else, the paperwork burden was huge. Doing work for a federal funding source like Medicaid, you just have to expect to do easily 4 to 5 times more paperwork than you would do in a private clinic because of the bureaucracy of the federal government and the regular audits.

The higher admin would talk about having good self-care and say to never work more than 40 hours a week, but when I brought up my concerns with higher admin that it felt impossible to reach productivity goals unless I worked 45-50 hours a week, I felt dismissed. We had high turnover because when people saw they could work in less stressful environments, they would leave. Most of the people who had been there long-term had moved up into administration. I literally only knew one therapist who had been there for his whole career and had never tried to move up into an administrative position.

If you look on Indeed you will see that Wasatch has many, many open therapist jobs. I think at a couple of points last year there were more than 50 unfilled therapist positions. I believe this is related to high turnover and low employee satisfaction.

Admittedly, I don’t know what it was like for the non-therapist hourly workers in terms of how they were evaluated for job performance. I’m not sure how they calculated their productivity.

There were some good things about working there too. Like I said, the managers over the individual programs and the supervisors under the program managers were generally wonderful. Sometimes in any given year all the employees in the company would get bonuses or cost-of-living adjustments that would land a nice chunk of change in our pockets. 

The pay was just OK, but the benefits were amazing (insurance, pension, paid state and federal holidays). I make about $20,000 more a year in my current job, but on a practical level I am making less money overall because the benefits I got working at Wasatch were usually worth $30,000+ a year. The reason I haven’t gone back to work there is because I am willing to take an effective $10,000 a year pay cut because the stress is so much less at my current private clinic. But if the government ever gets rid of Obamacare, I might go back to Wasatch just for the excellent insurance benefits and the HSA plan (that they contributed $2600 a year to when I was there).

And professionally the work was very beneficial. I kind of think of it like a baptism by fire for me as a new therapist. While the work as a therapist was hard because of the difficulties that our clients lived with, it gave me much better skills than other therapists I saw who didn’t work in community mental health. I now train new therapists, and I excel at it because of things I learned while working at Wasatch, things that therapists outside of community mental health may not ever learn. For example, because of working with DCFS court-involved cases (while a big pain in the butt because they took a lot of additional time that wasn’t always billable) I learned a lot about the legal system in ways that continue to serve me now that I work in a private clinic and train new therapists. 

And, perhaps most importantly, you feel a great sense of satisfaction because you know you are helping the people in society who really need it most—and it is hard to put a price tag on that. So I don’t want to scare therapists away because I feel it is a great benefit to society to help the people who need it the most, and to help therapists to be the best version of themselves in terms of skills and compassion. That’s part of why this whole evaluation of Wasatch is really complicated for me even 5 years later.

So I would give it 4.5 stars for the first few years I worked there, 1.5 stars for the last few years I worked there, and an overall weighted average of 2 (or maybe 2.25?) stars for my entire experience.

At Wasatch, we typically see eight clients per day, four in the morning and four in the afternoon. Because it is a community mental health agency, our caseloads are big and it is hard to specialize as we see all  age ranges and diagnoses. The work/life balance can be tricky as there is a considerable amount of paperwork and no built in time for that paperwork. There are also set service delivery expectations which can be frustrating. However, recent changes in the past year have made it easier to meet those expectations. The management at Wasatch is great! The work environment friendly and supportive. We have weekly staff meetings where important issues are discussed. There are plenty of opportunities to staff cases. The benefits are incredible! I have a serious chronic health condition and have had to miss a great deal of work in the past year. I  had plenty of leave time to cover those days. We also get several paid holidays per year and extended leave time during Christmas. The bereavement leave is also incredible. Our pay is less than private practice but the benefits, for me, make up the difference. Everyone has their preference, but I love Wasatch and would recommend it to others. 

Benefits are not as great as they are made out to be. Management needs to take a look at what other companies are offering because they don't even understand how behind the times they are with "competitive benefits". Don't even get me started on wages. Employees have been with Wasatch Mental Health for so long that they don't know how much many of them are being underpaid. It might have made a difference to take a pay cut if you were at least valued as an employee, but their recognition program is rigged (let's just say that nepotism is an issue here). Why would anyone work for a company when they are underpaid and underappreciated?! Hence, why I no longer work there. Lots of negativity and drama between departments which are never resolved. Serious claims/complaints/grievances were not being taken seriously nor investigated while others made false accusations to get what they wanted (Nepotism!).

I worked there under different management. The culture promoted was based on 12 years of recorded experience on what works and what does not work as well. It was great, but when the new manager and team members came in many of the workers left. They personally told me that it was because the new culture was not uplifting for the children. I put in my two weeks as well because I was expected to toughen up on the children and justify this treatment. A list of why I should be released was made, but they said it would not be used if I resigned. They gave me a deadline that was too quick to give me time to adjust and see if something could work out, so I left having left them our Training Packet so they can have a better guide in the future; because I knew the new culture would not work. A team member who stayed then called me mutliple times trying to get me interested in returning but I had lost trust for the time being. I am ready to work here and anywhere again.

I do believe Wasatch Behavioral Health is a well rounded employment with wonderful benefits. Though it does require people to over come comfort zones and pick up some slack that others may leave behind. However, when you are a male in a female facility there have been disappointments in leadership as Females get the approval for more leadership experiences, given it is a female facility. Personally, I enjoy my job while it took some getting used to, as I possess two degrees, I also believe some ignorant staff take the job for granted and possess some of the same weaknesses they council their clients not to possess. Therefore, I do believe management could do a better job in filtering out individuals that are not prepared to handle the physical escalations of some clients. 

I had the opportunity to be an intern at Wasatch and my experience was excellent. They have a way of running things that keeps their employees from becoming overworked or burnt out. Everyone is so respectful, professional, and helpful. Their is a feeling of friendship among co-workers that makes going to work enjoyable. For therapists, they do not overwork you with endless forms and social work, but rather keep you primarily focused on doing therapy. They have an excellent system that makes doing case notes and paper work in general very easy. Their management is probably one of the best parts of the company. While they maintain high standards, the management is calm, kind, genuine, and eager to help you learn your job. Overall an excellent mental health place to be a part of.

I worked for Wasatch for several years in various departments and was hired right out of school. I received excellent training and support from my direct supervisors, and my overall experience and job satisfaction were high. The supervisors and coworkers were supportive, and most employees had strong motivations and cared about the quality of their work.

One aspect I appreciated about Wasatch was the variety of populations served and the opportunities for internal hiring, allowing employees to transition to other roles if needed. I only left due to a family move, but I look back on my time there fondly.

While there was occasionally a disconnect between corporate leadership and staff, I believe leadership genuinely strives to support clients and the community. Overall, I think Wasatch is a great place to work.

Working with Wasatch Behavioral Health has been such an awesome experience. Utah County Department of Drug and Alcohol Prevention and Treatment merged with Wasatch Mental Health to become Wasatch Behavioral Health. 
My time there was awesome as we transitioned to the current system WMH had already. 

There is a great sense of openness and kindness through-out the organization. It's so easy to talk to managers about questions if one is confused on what to do next.

Great experience with the Organization!

I loved my clients and most of my coworkers, but I always felt a bit undervalued as an employee as so much emphasis is put on numbers and productivity. While I understand this, it makes it difficult because we are held responsible for this even if we do not have enough clients on our case load or when the clients are unreliable at coming to appointments etc. I also feel like there’s a big disconnect across different agencies, it feels divided between those in administration and those actually doing the work with the clients. The benefits are good, but ultimately I can’t support a family on the wage that I get. 

Wasatch has been a great company to work for. I find the people who are employed by WMH genuinely care in making a difference in people's lives. Because of this passion, it creates a company culture of truly embracing wellness and community unity. The benefits package offered for full time employees is top notch and includes an outstanding retirement plan through Utah Retirement Systems. While the pay may not be as competitive as other companies, it is much more rewarding to be a part of something worthwhile!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Developmental service worker 83 salaries reported	$18.69 per hour
Case manager 37 salaries reported	$25.65 per hour
Therapist 33 salaries reported	$37.80 per hour
Mental health technician 2 salaries reported	$18.24 per hour
Behavioral specialist 5 salaries reported	$20.14 per hour

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