Workplace reviews and discussion: 何嘉仁國際文教團隊_何嘉仁實業股份有限公司

The branch where I worked was large, and I learned a lot. My colleagues were relatively young, so we got along well, and they were always willing to help when problems arose.

When I made mistakes as a newcomer, my supervisor took responsibility and apologized to the parents on my behalf.

As soon as I had worked there for six months, I was given three days of leave. Although I couldn’t actually use them, it was still nice that they proactively informed me instead of pretending not to know just because I was a clueless newcomer.

The interview process began through 104. I first went to the head office, where I took an English listening test even though I had applied for a tutoring classroom position. After passing, I was assigned to a branch for a second interview, where I took tests in Chinese, English, math, science, and social studies. Some of the questions even contained errors. Because the supervisor for that area was at another branch, I was then asked to go to yet another branch for an interview. It was extremely inefficient.

There was a severe shortage of staff. If there weren’t enough teachers, forget about taking leave, because no one could cover your classes. Most annual leave could only be used during the winter and summer vacations, and even then it had to be taken by rotation.

There was absolutely no overtime pay, only compensatory leave, and unused compensatory leave could not be cashed out (although the academic affairs staff once helped negotiate this). If you were a lower-grade teacher, you were in trouble, because lower grades only had full-day classes on Tuesdays, meaning substitute teachers could only take compensatory leave on Tuesdays. However, there were many things to do on Tuesdays (weekly disinfection: thoroughly washing the children’s lunch bowls, disinfecting tables and chairs, washing the classroom fans, cleaning the windows, and so on…………). If you chose to take the day off, you ended up having to work overtime to do these tasks yourself.

The work started getting busy half an hour before dismissal: picking up the children → serving lunch → urging them to finish their homework (children nowadays have extremely short attention spans).

Hess International mainly focuses on English classes, so from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. there were English lessons. If you didn’t urge the children to finish the required assignments before 2:00, things would become extremely stressful after 4:00, when parents arrived to pick them up and their homework still wasn’t finished.

The rules required sweeping and mopping the classroom every day, but in reality it was impossible to finish before the end of the workday, because you couldn’t clean while parents were waiting outside the classroom.

I originally thought that, given how large an education business Hess International was, all courses would be planned centrally. That was not the case: each branch had to design its own winter and summer vacation courses.

The supervisor was slow and often waited until the last minute to start working. There were many administrative tasks to handle before the start of the winter and summer vacation sessions, but the supervisor waited until the very last day to distribute the communication books that needed name labels. As a result, I worked the early shift that day (starting at 7:00 a.m.) and, although I should have been able to leave at 4:00 p.m., ended up working overtime until 7:30 p.m.

Administrative staff should be careful: if there aren’t enough people, you may be pulled in to work as an emergency after-school tutor.

Also, during the interview, another more senior manager kept praising my excellent test results, good upbringing, and ambition (come on, it was an interview).

But when I resigned, I was told that my thinking was negative (even though they were the one who asked why I was leaving). They chose to ask me while the students were returning, causing the children in the class to become chaotic.

They took notes while asking questions and said they wanted to understand the reasons for my resignation so they could improve in the future. At least that made it feel as though they were making a sincere effort.