“In sickness and in health” applies to both husband and wife, or in this case employer and employees. And unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, things were about to change in a big way, and none of us were prepared or protected.
A new leader was announced, her remit was to turn the business around, an aim, which at the time, everyone supported, but within eighteen months everything was unravelling. I guess the writing was on the wall right from the beginning. Each centre has four managers, I was the education manager. As the new leader toured the country two things became apparent, firstly the education managers were ignored, not invited to meet her either in the centre or to join the inevitable welcome dinner afterwards, and secondly, she had a script, anyone who questioned her ideas was rapidly silenced. The next step was to remove the highly experienced education management team at the national and regional level and to replace it with a new inexperienced team that were unlikely to present any disagreement with the leadership. It was not long afterwards that the EF core values began to disappear. Surprisingly, practice classes (as opposed to regular “teaching” classes) where it was encouraged that the teachers create their own activities were removed and replaced with formulaic and badly planned pre-prepared classes. Any avenue for teacher creativity was blocked and as the weeks progressed communications between management were not just lacking, but actively discouraged. Weeks, not days passed when every attempt I made to talk to my fellow centre managers were thwarted as they physically ran away. I subsequently discovered that this was due to a regional directive, education managers should be excluded from all meetings. In order to announce the demise of the western region, all managers, except education, were taken to a five star hotel in Xi’an where the primary topic for discussion was nothing related to how the impact of these closures could be minimised for the staff, but simply focused on vague promises that could be made to students and how long they could extend their contracts in order to minimise refund requests. The staff, previously lauded as the very foundation of the company, were to be cut adrift. Chinese employment law is very clear on how redundancies are to be compensated, but the continuing policy of avoiding any form of communication just added to the confusion, distrust, and dismay from all sides. Termination notices were issued by Shanghai and sent without explanation. Staff were told to sign or risk losing everything. The trouble was that most of these notices contained errors, and without pointing fingers, I can truthfully say that I never saw one that was erring on the side of the employee. As a team manager I sat down with everyone and relayed the errors back down the chain of command, usually resulting in the employee left in limbo and frustration. Remember, this is an international corporation, undergoing a restructure. It is not a company heading into administration. Everything good, everything positive, everything we valued about this company gone. When the managers returned from their final “jolly” to Xi’an and held centre meetings to announce the closures, the meetings were 50% what to tell the students and 50% “look at the amazing new stuff we can do for our online clients” and 0% about the attendees of the meeting. For me the final straw, the one thing that killed all feelings of nostalgia was the way EF dealt with its foreign employees, which was by not paying them any severance pay (contrary to Chinese law) and refusing to discuss it at all. Explain to me the rationale for such a racist policy, why pay 98% of the staff severance and exclude the foreigners? The foreigners who had bought in to the dream, who planned to be there long term, to build a life and career around EF. The foreigners who helped sell EF’s product now not only have to find a new job but struggle financially over the summer before starting a new job in September. They will of course be forced to find a legal representative to begin the process of retrieving what is legally theirs. EF follow true to form by refusing to communicate, hoping the problem will go away.
I began my journey in July 2013, I was given notice in April 2022, I finished work in June 2022 and my case for arbitration is scheduled for October 2022.
Are you looking to join the international ESL community and are thinking of joining EF?
Please take my advice, you are 4 years too late, think twice, and explore other avenues. You are a highly trained professional and deserve to be treated as one.
