What I have experienced at NeighborWorks America is a classic graduate and doctoral study case: mismanagement, low employee morale, age and racial discrimination, a caste system, and grumpy long-term employees who favor a salary rather than getting the job done. My biggest concerns for this organization are the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing, there is never clear communication, and some of the senior managers or middle managers don't care what is going on, or never know what is going on.
Performance reviews are a joke, and for such a lengthy review process, nothing ever comes out of them. A lot of the managers do not know how to manage people with more experience than them, newbies with real hands-on experience or younger staff with a fresh and positive outlook to the work at hand.
Of course, there is no work-life balance and most people take their work home with them. There is not a lot of turnover because the average employee has been with NeighborWorks for 15 years.
No one here appreciates creativity, does not know how to use technology and constantly reminding the young people they have no place at the company and will leave shortly, all on the basis of being young.
I am sure the organization has broken a dozen employment labor laws. I have heard how they treat people during interview process and its ugly.
I have heard some of the managers curse their staff or call them out of their names, and top managers talking about their staff in negative ways to other employees. Senior management needs to institute a system for people to make complaints for verbal abuse.
There is no trust among employees and senior management. You cannot even trust HR. They send confidential communications to the people you make complaints against with your name in bold and they will never address your concerns directly. HR would rather trust the person a complaint is getting made against, especially if they are a senior manager. A very stressful environment.
