Where do I begin...
Firstly, I've been extremely disappointed in our C-suite leadership over these past few years, but the CEO has been especially disappointing as of late.
At a recent roundtable that was supposed to bridge communication with executive leadership and frontline staff, I had lost even more faith in this organization based on the unprofessionalism that was exhibited as well as the lack of follow-through on what was discussed.
Something that was brought up was leadership's recent decision to take away the work-from-home and flexible scheduling policy which significantly impacted the lives and well-being of staff here. To announce this, they also used a clearly AI-generated message to staff notifying us of the change.
The CEO cited poor audit results, which seems like a blatant lie they're using to justify whatever the real reason is, especially considering the Denver Client Services team had an excellent audit - so much so that one of the Directors at CDPHE became emotional at how much improvement there was at our last audit. He even tried to justify the change by talking about a Wall Street Journal article (not a trusted source for any scientific or statistical claims btw) of which he clearly didn't read because it doesn't even back the claims he was trying to make.
During this conversation about WFH/flex scheduling, the CEO showed absolutely no compassion for the lives of the employees that were upended by this change causing many of us to have to adjust childcare schedules, school schedules, exhaust more resources to make it into the office, and ultimately taking away a substantial pillar of our wellness. Leadership pretends to care about our wellness, but it is very evident that this is not true. Especially when they only let certain people in leadership keep the ability to continue working from home.
Also mentioned at this roundtable was the fact that leadership had listed a position for a Health Access Program Coordinator role at a much higher salary range than what current employees were making. Leadership said that it was incorrectly listed as such and it would be changed - but here we are weeks later and the salary range has remained unchanged on that listing...
What was even more distressing was the fact that, in the second session offered for the round table, the CEO refused people the right to bring up the topic of WFH/flexible schedules, even though many people in that second session had not attended the first or had the chance to voice their opinion. Not only that, he literally scolded an employee who attempted to bring up that topic after not hearing his message at the beginning, and I was utterly appalled at the behavior he had exhibited. The way he called this employee out and shut her down was deplorable, and I can't even imagine how bad that must have made that employee feel to be yelled at like that in front of her colleagues and leadership in the room. I find it very strange that the CEO says he has an "open door policy" but exhibits behavior like this and expects people to be open and transparent with him. How obscenely out of touch with reality he must be... Needless to say, many of us have shared our grievances about how much worse we feel after attending those roundtables.
Something I'd particularly like to note about our CEO is that he has restricted us from offering basic needs to clients purely because he doesn't like the "aesthetic." We were once offering clothes to clients in front of our food bank, but he would no longer allow that because he didn't like the way it looked in the hallway. He also had someone take down a bunch of program flyers in our lobby because, again, he didn't like the way it looked. When we were trying to put up flyers for a new exciting program, we were told that they could not be put in the lobby at all. I think it's really inappropriate to decrease program visibility and prevent us from offering things like clothes - which clients repeatedly reported how much they appreciated - just because you don't like the way it looks. A real leader would have come up with an alternative solution to still keep all of those things, but he decided to prioritize his need for everything to meet his aesthetic standard over the needs of our clients and making sure they are aware of what services we're offering.
In addition to our CEO, our CPO has not made any noticeable contribution to this organization that I've been able to observe. I assume he does things behind the scenes, but that's part of the problem. He's so disconnected from day-to-day operations that no one actually knows what he does, and he hasn't supported staff in any visible way. With our egregious caseloads, he (and some other leadership, frankly) could step in to help, but simply doesn't. I'm not even sure he would know how to help if he tried since he is so disconnected from the day-to-day.
In any meeting or training I've been in with him, he isn't exactly well-spoken and doesn't seem to understand the program regulations well. That's likely because he hasn't actually done any direct client-facing work in more than a decade. Whenever he talks to case management, he keeps saying that he "gets it" because he "was a case manager once too," but he seems stuck in that time when things were completely different. What really gets me is that he says he was once a case manager, and now he in a position of power to actually fix the things that weren't working in case management, but instead he just keeps perpetuating those same issues. We have so many other great leaders already in this organization who could take his role easily.
I would also like to call out the implicit racism of upper leadership, particularly from the Director of HR, who has exhibited some very odd behavior in general. They continue to use the archaic framework of PIPs, which are inherently racist, and they make this evident by having a disproportionate number of people of color on PIPs. As of yet, I do not know any white people who have been put on PIPs, but I can name several people of color who have. I have also witnessed micro-aggressions exhibited by the Director of HR towards a specific person here and many others have noted having odd interactions with her. I won't give any details as to not potentially expose someone, but I wish I felt safe enough to report these things. However, based on what I've seen, nothing will be done about it and our CEO hasn't exactly made himself seem approachable as of late.
One gripe I have had since I started, and there has been little-to-no progress on, is the caseload sizes. When I started, I was given a caseload of more than 100+ people as a case manager which is an absurd amount of people to hold on a caseload given how much we are expected to do for clients. While they have somewhat reduced and redistributed these caseloads, they are still averaging about 85-90 per CM. This complaint has been voiced more times than I can count, and leadership has not addressed this. In the Health Access department, there has even been more than 200+ people on every person's caseload for a very long time. Coupling this with the fact that they no longer let us do hybrid schedules or have the option to do four 10-hour days, it's completely unsustainable to expect this much work for such little pay and limited work-life balance.