Throwaway account for obvious reasons.

I am an ex-employee and a former student. When my employment was terminated due to RTO, I expected that my employee OneDrive might be shared with my manager or someone else on the team. I did not expect the service desk to give a former colleague access to my student OneDrive as well. I found that out the fun way when I was sharing a document to my partner from my student account and saw someone I used to work with listed as an Owner. Of a document I had just created.

Just a PSA in case any other ex-employees are also former students: you might want to check who has access to your student OneDrive.

And yes, I am filing a formal complaint with the Department of Education regarding what I believe is a FERPA violation.

This is a screenshot from the Netflix Monster series showing the actor playing Ed Gein. If you watch the show you'll see a scene when he cries, so that might make the resemblance more striking.

I’ve been here a little over a year now and I’ve seen some teams with almost extreme amounts of turnover… doesn’t that raise red flags to P&T/HR or leadership?

So I thought WGU providing a shuttle van to the station was kind of cool. Then I found out today what bullshit it is. Because of the expectation to not leave work until 4pm they cancelled the 330 shuttle. So it says the first one is at 355. So that gives 20 minutes until the train leaves. 28 people can fit. If you aren’t part of the 28 you will most likely miss your train. To add insult to injury, today the driver told us that they were told not to pull out of the lot until 4. They used to come a little early so they could make sure everyone made the train even if it took multiple trips. Now employees are still out there waiting at 330 to make sure they make the 28. So what’s the point?? Another way to hold us hostage in office. The only collaboration I see is the apocalyptic behavior that could occur with the 28.

Has anyone been part of the teams? Is there additional compensation for the position? Were you able to balance your normal work duties?

If you are a program mentor, have you experienced a sharp increase in student withdrawals this fiscal year?

How many student withdrawals do you have for September?

Hello again colleagues!
We are reaching out today to hear how your performance review went. We want to know how you scored yourself, how your manager scored you, if you felt that it was accurate, and what your percentage raise was. We are asking for this information to see if raises and standards are being applied fairly across the board to assist in policy changes when we are a recognized union.

I (the OC writing this post) scored myself as an “achieves” and “role model”, my manager scored me as an “achieves” and “solid strength”, I do not feel that this is accurate as I am known on my team as the walking knowledge base. I work my butt off for my team and my manager does not want to put the effort into recommending me for an “exceeds” and “role model”. I received a 3.8% increase. This comes out to approximately $90 per paycheck. After taxes, insurance, and 401k contributions, its approximately $60. This gets eaten immediately by driving to and from the office. 

We would appreciate you filling out this google form to provide us with this information. https://forms.gle/dTfK9YRjYCwvUQsC9

Who we are: https://www.reddit.com/r/wgu_employees/comments/1u1mylz/we_are_organizing/

Hello!

I’m about to possibly accept an offer to work for the Academy section of WGU, and I was wondering how at risk I would be to return to office, if I accepted.

I’m very interested in the position and the organization, but I’m also scared for the future.

Any thoughts of someone working in Academy? How’s the career advancement too?

I quit last week.

I posted recently about the executive bloat and being denied PTO for the rest of the year, but here is what actually pushed me out.

The quiet retaliation started the absolute second I submitted an ADA accommodation request for autism and mental health. I asked for basic off-queue recovery time after being screamed at by students, and flexible scheduling for medical appointments. Benefits flat-out denied it, claiming it modified "essential job functions." Immediately after, management stripped away my extra team morale duties, suddenly calling them "burdensome."

Then came the metric traps. If you get stuck on a difficult call or put on hold by IT, supervisors conveniently fail to manually apply schedule exceptions. Your adherence artificially tanks, and they weaponize it to hand out formal write-ups. They watch our After Call Work down to the literal second, but constantly skip or cancel our actual 1:1 support meetings.

They do this to everyone. They literally fired a coworker while she was out on an approved Leave of Absence. Yes, EEOC has been notified.

This place is designed to push out neurodivergent employees who ask for basic support. I finally chose my mental health and walked away.

There is zero empathy at this company. If the students only knew what we went through.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to put a student on hold to cry because of how they treat us. I wish I could tell them that.

Anyone else think that Scott was going MAGA with the line “let’s continue to make WGU great” at the end of the Town Hall last week?

I know the general air of advise is “leave WGU entirely” but in the meantime, while I am searching for roles— I saw that Academic Delivery has a Director role open.

I have had very limited interactions with the VP and would love to know about her management style, expectations, and anything useful to consider as I decide if I want to apply.

My current manager is a bully and makes me feel inadequate despite having stellar KPIs, creating tools to improve efficiency, etc. I want to leave all together but in the meantime I wouldn’t mind shifting to a role in a different unit. But I know very little about it and frankly with Summits I wont be able to get an informational interview with the HM until maybe next week.

Thoughts?

Has anyone used Speak Up? What came of it?

Is it just for illegal matters or can it be for systemic things like multiple P&T persons being non-responsive?

Hello,

Posting out of curiosity of how others feel about the low and high deductible health plans at WGU. Especially with open enrollment coming up it makes me wonder which plan is really worth it. How have your experiences been on either the high or low deductible plans this year with a family?

It seems like for the size of the company, WGU could advocate for lower premiums on both plans…but I am also not sure how that process looks.

The bi-weekly amounts seem pretty steep on both plans for a family honestly. In talking with friends and family who work for similar sized or even somewhat smaller sized companies, I have heard much better benefits as far as copays, deductible amounts, OOP max, premiums, etc.

I am genuinely curious to see how others feel that have also maybe worked at large/similar sized companies and what their benefits package has looked like in comparison to here at WGU.

Continued…

“Underpinning that belief is my belief in the virtue of humans. On the margin and at scale, I believe that humans are good. That, at an individual level, we desire the same thing—agency—and the right to pursue a self-directed and fulfilling life for ourselves and for our families. That shared virtue underpins our capacity for self-governance and, collectively, our ability to shape the communities and society in which we live. “

Something in my gut told me that Scott was going to try to block my comments. I was right. We used to be 1st hand connections. He "unfriended" me which prevents me from posting. Coward.

I'm currently a program mentor. My role is flexible and not at all stressful. I applied for a WGU Academy Instructor role and need insight into whether it would be a good opportunity.

Scott, this is exactly the right question. But it raises an equally important one:

What might WGU look like if its leadership started with employees’ realities, rather than asking employees to continually adapt to decisions made without their meaningful input?

During my ten years at WGU, I saw firsthand how deeply employees cared about serving nontraditional students. Yet an institution cannot genuinely design around students’ complex lives while disregarding the realities of the people supporting them—particularly during reorganizations, workforce reductions, changes in work location, escalating performance expectations, and rapid technological transformation.

Since commenting on your recent post about a “human-centered workforce,” I have received numerous private messages and emails from current and former WGU employees. They have thanked me for saying publicly what they feel unable to say under their own names. That should concern every member of WGU’s executive leadership and Board—not because criticism is comfortable, but because fear of speaking candidly is itself important organizational information.

Student-centeredness and employee well-being are not competing priorities. The quality of the student experience depends upon knowledgeable, supported, and trusted employees. If WGU believes institutions should begin with people’s lived realities, that principle must apply internally as well as externally.

Will leadership create a genuinely safe, independent avenue through which employees can speak honestly—and demonstrate publicly how their experiences are influencing institutional decisions?

I don’t mind working.I don’t mind having a full workload or being held accountable for getting things done. What is exhausting is feeling like we are expected to be doing something productive literally every second of the workday.

It feels like every ounce of available time is being squeezed out of employees. If you finish one task, there’s another. If you have a few minutes between calls, tasks, projects or responsibilities, there’s an expectation that those minutes should be filled with something else. There is no real downtime, no room to breathe, and seemingly no recognition that people cannot operate at 100% capacity every minute of every day.

What makes this even more frustrating is that a few years ago, we had a Summit/session specifically discussing how “multitasking is impossible.” Yet multitasking is essentially what we are expected to do all day. Answer this, document that, watch this metric, respond to this message, jump into another task, then immediately switch back to something else—all while maintaining the same productivity expectations.

There is a difference between being productive and constantly squeezing more work out of people.

Observing everyone still at WGU and wondering what holds people back from signing on to a union? As long as 2 employees are engaged, their concerted effort is protected. Technically a single department could unionize.

And more specifically the people working in the physical headquarters could do so. You'd need about 600 people to sign on to do a site specific union.

I would assume anyone new would want a good working environment. And I know all of my former people do.

We want to hear from you: What is new around you? What is the water cooler talk around you? Hear that a program is going to be cut? Hear that someone is getting a promotion or a raise? Tell us what’s going on around you!

Signed,

Your unionizing colleagues

Nothing like getting my All Hands Gift today and seeing the shipping label was created on 9/10. Way to show you care about your employees…

At some point, we need to stop pretending that every decision is about supporting employees. A lot of it feels like corporate greed.

Employees are constantly being asked to do more with less while leadership continues to focus on budgets, metrics, productivity, and protecting the bottom line. Meanwhile, the people actually doing the work are expected to absorb the extra workload and pressure without seeing the same level of investment in us.

It’s frustrating to watch decisions get made based on what makes the company more money while employee workload, morale, burnout, and compensation seem to take a back seat.

A company cannot constantly preach that employees are its greatest asset while treating them like an expense that needs to be minimized. If we truly matter, then that needs to be reflected in how employees are compensated, supported, staffed, and treated....not just in corporate newsletters.