Prince Harry is BetterUp’s Chief Impact Officer, But Profile Within the Company Doesn’t Exist?
Prince Harry joined BetterUp, a mental health startup located in Silicon Valley, early 2021 as its Chief Impact Officer. According to a report by the New York Post, there’s trouble currently brewing at the company as disgruntled workers speak up about new policy that could lead to pay cuts.
However, Harry previously advised people to quit their job if it doesn’t serve them well and impedes on their mental well-being.
Career Coaches at BetterUp Revolt Against Compensation Plans
Last October, the company announced that it raised $300 million and is currently valued at $4.7 billion. This year, for some reason, BetterUp could be slashing the salary of their coaches, and workers are demanding that they receive modified contracts to equate the pay cuts.
Per the report, a career coach said that BetterUp bosses were turning them into a “commodity”.
The internal unrest stems from coaches’ pay and a new rating system that is set to affect their fees. The company uses metrics to evaluate clients’ experiences, in order to determine the worth of a session, but BetterUp coaches are saying this may lead to some biased feedback.
“[If] I’m coaching a member, I don’t want to be focused on how they’re going to rate me,” another BetterUp contractor told the Daily Beast. “From an ethical perspective… we are there to coach the client, not to have them press the ‘like’ button.”
BetterUp has called for a meeting in order to review its previous working plans, but the details of it are not yet definitive, per reports obtained by media outlets.
“No one will see any sort of decrease in their effective session rate compared to their 2021 effective session rate,” a BetterUp executive wrote to coaches on Tuesday following a Daily Beast inquiry. “We are on a multi-year journey, and we will be treating this first year as a learning period.”
BetterUp is yet to respond to media inquiries regarding the report.
BetterUp Coaches Call Out Start-Up Company for Imposing New “Capitalism” Metrics System
The six coaches who spoke with the Daily Beast confirmed that they were okay with their jobs prior to the new company policy and contract changes announced earlier this month.
“Many of us were very, very excited about it,” one coach said, as it appeared BetterUp was going to raise rates. “Instead what they came out with was a program that cut everybody’s pay in the middle of one of the greatest inflation times in history.”
Another fumed: “This is the way capitalism I suppose works. But for a company [whose] mission is to help empower people throughout the world … they’re not walking the walk.”
Prince Harry’s Job at BetterUp Termed “Smoke and Mirrors”
A year after stepping down from royal life and repeatedly talking about his mental health in talk shows and podcasts, the Prince landed a job with U.S. mental health firm BetterUp.
In a mocked interview in February, the Prince encouraged workers who aren’t happy at their jobs to “quit”.
He also shared his tips to avoiding “burnout”, saying that he takes 45 minutes out of everyday to destress either by working out, working a dog, or meditating.
“I know that I need to meditate every single day,” he said in February.
The Daily Beast reported that none of the BetterUp coaches contacted by the outlet had details of Prince Harry’s role in the company — with one speculating that his association with the startup could all be for merely marketing “smoke and mirrors”.
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