IPA is not some abstruse system thatnew initiates to a language-based profession spend decades mastering. We really are talking bare minimum effort, here--it takes maybe a day or two to understand. The IPA that they use here isn't even the 'real' one, it's just a handful of simplified symbols. I don't think that it is so critical to teaching, but it will give you your student's respect ( and a basic knowlegde of phonetics and phonics can only help you as a teacher).

I agree with others that Chinese employers are not worth any kind of dedication. I have lived and worked in many countries, and I consider every entity that I have worked for here to be the absolute picture of lazy, self-involved worthlessness. I can almost guarantee you that you owe your current employer zero effort (shoot, I work for one of the top ten unis in China...if I walk out on these idiots before the end of the semester, they would deserve it)...but what do you owe yourself? Just because this culture encourages people to be useless, does not mean you should let it turn you into an LBH.