Pew Charitable Trusts Employee Reviews about "culture of fear"

Cons

-Micromanagement. -Culture of fear. -You will not move up. -I got promoted and my salary went up 2%. A new person got hire for the same job and make $10K more. After consulting HR for a pay scale, got told (quote) 'unfortunately, a new hire will a better offer, that's how the system is setup'. -High turnover. So bad that we had 3 different SVP's in less than than 3 years. This company hire at least 25 employees per month but, at the same time, around 20 employees leave every month. -HR department do more damage to the employee than help. -Minorities only occupy lower level positions. I only know of 3 managers that can be part of a minority. No higher than that. -Non profit ? Really? Someone should look in to that.

Cons

Where to begin... basically, all the other reviews you'll read here are true. It's taken me a year to post this because that's how long it took to re-assimilate from the culture of fear. In retrospect, I'm beginning to believe that Pew is just an experiment: Put all the mice in a very shiny cage with nowhere to hide. Pressure the mice to perform. Punish them when they do. Periodically reorganize the cage completely, shuffling beloved senior mice out of the cage in the process and hoping the others won't notice. (They do.) Some specifics: - What I mean by a 'culture of fearlture of fearlture of fear': Employees are not trusted at all. Everything must go through at least five layers of approval. Even then, there will be reasons to be slapped on the wrist... maybe someone used an adjective in a press interview or wore shoes that exposed both toes and heels. (These are not exaggerations in the slightest.) - Extremely top heavy, with a very vertical structure. Junior employees learn very quickly that they are junior and, as such, not worthy. This extends to all areas of work - including seating. For instance, only senior associates get a cube next to a window. - The ambiance, while pretty, is oppressive. Literally glass doors, when there are doors. (Only one person's office has one.) Meeting rooms like fishbowls. People tasked with running around making sure employees only have one plant and aren't draping their jackets over their chairs or leaving scuffs on the floor. (Again, not kidding.) - Benefits on the decline. The stated reasoning for this was that Pew was too far ahead of the nonprofit pack. However, many of us (myself included) took substantial pay cuts because of the good benefits package. - Arbitrary and inconsistent career advancement policies. Employees are told they can be considered for a promotion after two years. For most, that is true. However, promotions have happened at the senior management level for very new employees. - High turnover. - The two above bullets combined result in junior employees working in multiple positions at once with no possibility of being promoted while doing so. For me, this resulted in working on 5-10 projects for years, only to be promoted to work for just a few of them (dropping the rest). - Extremely complex protocols through tons of different channels.