Hertz is a good company gone bad. Here's a list of what to expect:
-In my area, unbelievable HR blunders are common. New hires are sent to the wrong branch on day one, branch managers have no input about which candidates to hire, new MT's go for weeks unpaid as their checks are sent to the wrong location, new employees go for months without a security badge being generated which causes all kinds of problems. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior from a Fortune 500 company, and the only response you get from upper management is "Don't worry we will do better"
-The compensation is terrible for what you are asked to do
-Dehumanizing. You aren't a person, to the executives you are employee #345728 at location #01898 and you sold ____ much insurance last month. This is a target-fixated, stats-driven company that believes it can increase sales using negative reinforcement, fear and intimidation. It doesn't matter if the majority of the employees at a branch are getting written up every month, and it doesn't matter if the previous 3 or 4 employees running were fired for low sales numbers: The company's uniform sales policy is unbending. If you actually hit the minimum, no one will ever thank you and you will get no recognition.
-Hertz sets up agency locations at small airports and body shops where non-Hertz employees rent cars to customers. They have no incentive to sell the coverage, yet you as a branch manager are still punished as every single contract you put in from agencies drags your branch sales numbers down. Pilots will *never* accept coverage as they know they have blanket policies from their companies that make Hertz insurance unnecessary.
-It breaks my heart that the insurance adjusters first tell a customer to just say no to Hertz coverage, then when the customer gets to the body shop they are told the same thing, and I have to send an MT out who has no chance of making a sale. The company doesn't care. At times I feel like I'm not even in car rental I am an insurance salesman.
-Morale has hit rock-bottom due to incredibly high turnover, habitual understaffing, and frequent firings for bad reasons. It's like the Soviet Union, you come into work one day and find out who has been purged. They actually fire employees because they "have been there too long and haven't been promoted"
-About half the branches in my area have no manager present, as the previous manager left or was fired and was just never replaced. New hires are thrown into the fire and are expected to run the place with no training or support. Obviously through no fault of their own, disaster happens. Contracts aren't being closed out for weeks leading to $4,000 charges showing up on a customer's credit card. Cars go missing and aren't located for days. Angry vendors throw Hertz out of their location because no one working at the office has the training to answer their questions and the location has at most 2 cars on the lot.
-With only weeks left in the quarter, the company will announce that they are retroactively changing the bonus structure and it is obvious that they are moving the goal posts to avoid paying anything out. Even if your branch customer service scores are stellar, the company uses the NPS (net promoter score) of the *area* instead. What control do I have over the customer service at other branches? This unfair and frequently changing bonus structure leaves branch managers making less money than the hourly employees
-The reservation system has no component that considers whether cars are available at your branch and allows customers to book for SUV's, minivans etc and of course the customers are understandably upset when they arrive to find out you have no cars left on your lot. Corporate policy requires that you never say no to a reservation, and upper management is always making promises that they can get you anything you need on short notice. Of course, they usually don't follow through and the customers are the ones with ruined vacation plans or late appointments. Senior management makes all sorts of promises to small airports, body shops, corporate customers etc, yet as soon as they get off the complaint call about how Hertz never has cars available they announce that they are pulling cars from your location.
-You are so understaffed that you fight the constant phone calls, customer complaints, scrounging to get just one more car back on the lot while you are simultaneously cleaning, doing data entry and answering the phone.. And at the end of the day your only reward is threatening emails from senior management that say you aren't doing enough to grow the business and you didn't sell enough insurance. You ask for more employees to be able to make sales calls, and senior management responds that you will get another employee once you have more revenue. It doesn't matter that Hertz places two employees at an HLE whereas Enterprise would have put 4 or 5 there.
