The management can be very blunt, even unprofessional, and it comes off as extremely rude and passive aggressive, especially when the staff has questions. The environment there feels like you are in a high school, with all of the gossip, and the management acting like a mean girl clique. There are many times when management seems to “pick favorites” who are allowed to speak up about any issues within the company, but anyone who isn’t in that group is reprimanded for bringing issues to the table. On multiple occasions I watched people in management get up to go talk with others in management about how annoyed they were with someone on the staff. The management gossips about everyone in the office. Some of the new staff I didn’t even see until they’d been there for weeks and the company is only about 15 people. They do not introduce you to anyone on your first day, or do any sort of welcome lunch or activities. Lunch breaks are only 15 minutes, and you will be reprimanded if you take any more than that (Unless you clock out) Training is almost nonexistent and it seems almost rare for anyone to actually make it past the 3 month probation period as a result. Some issues brought up during this is that they verbally encourage the staff to ask questions, but become frustrated or reprimand staff when questions were asked. When the results were not what they wanted, they blamed the issues of the office on the staff and told us to fix them. While there, they had us fill out a review asking questions about how management was doing. Management refuses to listen to their employees. If the office gets closed for any reason other than a holiday, you will have to use a PTO day, or just go unpaid. The workflow went from having so much to do that we were working 10-15 hours of overtime, to having so little to do that we were required to watch tutorials and do 'practice assignments' as our hours got cut. It is difficult to bring concerns to HR since there is definitely some nepotism happening, which keeps staff from being able to bring issues (especially with management) up to an unbiased party.

There is no HR department, or anyone who is impartial when it comes to any concerns you would want to bring to HR. There is no annual raise, not even an annual inflation raise, so employees are basically stuck at what they were hired with. I made $13.00 an hour (after a couple raises) at the end of my time. I could have made more working at a coffee shop, yet I needed a degree to work here. If you care about your well being and your career prospects, avoid this company. They allow you almost no creative freedom and you are given tasks that are so monotonous,( i.e placing copy into a document for 8 hours a day) that you may as well just be working in a sweatshop.Due to this the majority of the employees still do their work even on their 'break'. Lunch breaks are 15 minutes, and you will be reprimanded if you take longer unless you clock out.The small work environment makes it impossible to bring up complaints due to the lack of an unbiased party.The work environment is so negative that you could hear a pin drop even though everyone works in the same room.The pay is equally as bad, and claim it to be 'industry-standard', even though you could make more working at a grocery store even though you have a degree for this.Managers push you aside when you have questions, and make you feel like you are incompetent when you do.The managers expect you to know everything, it is not a learning environment by any means. Terrible communication among management.Also, in my time at Composure I never had any issues with time off / vacations / the like - work / life balance is really good and they also offer a nice retirement savings plan and health insurance coverage. During the current pandemic I saw more work in and out of our doors than ever before, & saw how hard the President / VP / managers were and still are working to keep everything flush and moving and at the end of the day those are the kind of people you want to work for. A great opportunity to work with some titans of the publishing industry (where else can you say you did work for National Geographic?). That's something I (and the team) are extremely proud of. Cool to see designs / books come to life and be a driving force behind learning and development. Designs and clients continued to progress as my time there went on and it was great to see the growth around me as well. During the last few years of my time the work evolved and there was a big push into stuff more high end and more design-ey which I liked along with moving into the digital realm which was really cool to see.

I really enjoyed working with everyone there during my time with Composure.

Composure pro reviews