Pros
- Can help a lot of people, very rewarding, lovely clients. You have a lot of autonomy and flexibility to help clients however you can which is rare at most social service agencies. - Challenging work (can be good and bad). Can be emotionally intense sometimes but usually not overwhelming. - Loved my coworkers and the union. Really good people who want to make a difference and always willing to talk through the hard stuff. - Wages and benefits were satisfactory.
Cons
- Management is pretty unprofessional. A lot of what you would normally expect in a workplace (performance reviews, exit interviews, regular check-ins with your manager, training, onboarding, etc.) are lacking. A lot of people who work there have never worked anywhere else. There's a lot of "it's always been this way" attitude. -Almost no communication between different departments. - Workers are now being asked to work fully in person without a strong rationale for it. There's good reason for hybrid, but not fully in person. - Some questionable fiscal management and unethical ways of documenting client support services. It's often done for the good of a client, but when things go wrong it's often blamed on junior employees and hurts the program/organization in the long run.