TL;DR Many complaints about management. Many people have left this company unhappy. Freecom is very secretive. Female employees overwhelmingly leave and many are treated poorly. Many teachers feel like chess pieces being used to grow the image of something not their own. Exceedingly unorganized, understaffed, and without adequate materials.
Unfortunately, in my and many others' experience there are more cons than pros. It is hard to be objective so I will start with some facts.
Staff Retention: During my 10 months at freecom, at least 7 teachers quit (freecom doesn’t tell us when teachers leave so it's at least 7 I know of) in addition to several Japanese staff members. I can't speak for every one of them, but I have heard personally from many of them – Japanese staff included - that "Freecom isn't somewhere you want to stay for very long" and "This company has no idea what they are doing." The majority of the teachers and staff that left were female. Again, I'm not trying to lean one way or the other, just the facts there. To me, as a teacher, this is a huge red flag. Yes, I understand that teaching English overseas has a high turnover rate, but about one person leaving for every month I worked there is inexcusable and not to be overlooked. In one case it only took a teacher about a month to realize that freecom wasn't worth staying at for them, many of the reasons being major points that are brought up in this review.
Bills: Referring to one of the pros, housing and phones are provided. Everything is deducted from your pay, but it took almost a year of multiple people inquiring again and again for something as simple as a monthly payslip. This is something that a growing and "successful" company should be providing every month without even having to ask. Another red flag is that you don’t get to see any contracts. You have to take freecom's word that your rent and phone bill is what they say it is and somehow all of the rent is the same for many teachers despite being different buildings and management companies? Not to say that any wrongdoing is taking place, but transparency is very important and not one of freecoms strong suits. A responsible company would be forthcoming with all financial matters to ensure peace of mind.
Organization: Over the course of 10 months I must have been a part of 5 different ideas that were relatively unproductive and inconvenient, only to be forgotten weeks later once more and more people stopped caring. These included staff meetings that could have been addressed as an email rather than coming in 2 hours before work one day every other week and "daily meetings" which then had to be posted on facebook which then had to be updated after classes in case something happened. It got to the point where it was just a joke among the majority of the teachers, not because we didn’t care about our jobs or the company or the students, but because of the wasted time and effort that we put in knowing that these ideas would just disappear a month or so down the line. In my opinion, upper management has an idea and expects teachers to implement it regardless of reality. In fact, the CEO has openly stated to me that he sometimes loses touch with what's really going on because he is focused too much on the future ahead (read the growth of *his* company and image), and that his approach is "trial and error".
In addition, something that is very important is staff rooms. We all come together in the staff rooms between classes and before school begins. This *should* be a place where we feel comfortable and can plan classes appropriately. However, this is not the case. Freecom expects sometimes up to 4 teachers to plan at a table with broken legs and tiny little chairs around a space that can barely accommodate 2 teachers and books. On full days, some teachers are forced to plan in the classrooms because there just isn't enough space. At another location, freecom newly remodeled its entire upstairs and yet the teachers were left with a room that continuously leaks warm air in winter to the point where we were wearing jackets and huddled around the radiator because there is no other heater installed. Apparently they had been using gas heaters which give off toxic fumes and in an enclosed space (depsite leaky windows) it took a few of us teachers saying no to that health risk.
Management and Power: This (upper)management has had several complaints from various members, mostly being female. These range from inappropriate sexual comments, using position to manipulate staff for the company's benefit, and showing up to work drunk. When anything is brought up, we are immediately told that everything is confidential and we can't share with anyone outside of the meeting/email. By pigeon-holing it's staff, freecom mitigates many of the negative and mostly valid opinions. Before accepting a position at freecom, I had been told by a previous employee that freecom asks its staff to "spy" on other teachers and report back to them. I was also told that if I went against the management that I would become an outcast from the "club". I have to say that this was spot-on information. Both of these happened to me personally as well as others and the fact that someone had told me this would happen beforehand is a clear sign that it wasn’t an isolated incident.
Yet another huge issue at freecom is the managing of resources and staff. The simple fact is that freecom is understaffed. The CEO takes on new contracts and expects his teachers to accommodate accordingly. This means having Japanese staff members leave the school front desks unattended while they drive teachers to offsite locations, unbalanced and unfair work schedules between teachers, a total of less than 3 minutes on average to plan for each of your eight classes a day, and a lack of preparation and adequate attention to the multitude contracts. In classic growing-business fashion, the CEO bites off more than he (and most importantly the teachers and staff) can chew without building a strong foundation first. As a result, everything is left looking a bit unfinished and disorganized. Communication is key and freecom tends to be very "need to know basis" with things that would actually benefit everyone if there was more two-directional conversation.
Final Thoughts: There are more issues present with freecom, but many of them I leave to other previous teachers to bring up. It is my hope that they come forward with their experience rather than have the review page filled with misleading reviews. In this industry the negative feedback is crucial to maintaining integrity for employers and employees alike. I would never want to walk into a job without knowing as many things as possible. Unfortunately, someone who posts a review and says there are literally NO cons – this goes for any company – is an immediate disregard. In order to be fair, we have to be self-critical and many of the positive reviews here leave many things conveniently swept under the rug. I have also heard personally that freecom requested its current employees to write positive reviews in response to the first negative one (notice the dates of the positive reviews at first). Not only this, freecom attempted to manipulate me into convincing the original reviewer to take down the negative review. This alone should warn you that what you see may not be entirely accurate.
