Search for Common Ground Reviews

There are many cons to working at Search, especially at the lower levels of the latter. The first is that nobody, especially leadership, is held accountable for mistakes or misconduct. Most of upper-management has been at Search for many years. For that very reason, and because they are viewed as indispensable, they are permitted to say and act in any way they wish with little consequence. I personally received emails from colleagues that went beyond professional criticism and ventured into personal attacks. I have experienced and witnessed upper-level managers say things that are totally out of line to employees. Leadership, additionally, has no sense of boundaries. There is a lack of respect for peoples time. While most matters are not urgent, the higher-ups feel compelled to call, email, text, or Slack at any point, with the expectation that one should drop their lives to tend to their needs. There is a tacit expectation that you are on-call at all times. Finally, overall, leadership fails to celebrate achievements but instead always finds ways of criticizing. Nothing is ever enough. And when you do something well, they are more than happy to take the credit for it! Moving back to accountability, most egregious is the fact that I personal experienced personal, not professional, criticism from upper-level managers but when reported, there were no consequences. One executive called me into his office to tell me how I would never amount to anything and that it was a mistake to hire me. This seemly came out of the blue and was right before Christmas. The meeting was also called under the guise that he wanted to know MY aspirations. While this leader is no longer with Search, most in power were not phased when I shared this with them. By the way, that was my THIRD WEEK. Another longtime executive once patted my stomach in the elevator and suggested that I should take the stairs. When I raised this to HR several times, the best they could do was nod their head with an un-surprised look. This is what I mean by a lack of accountability. Longtime leaders are viewed as so indispensable that they can get away with anything. The majority of employees are left to suffer under this bad leadership. Believe though, there is hell to pay for much less egregious professional or personal transgressions if you sit lower on the totem pole (not from HR but likely from these very leaders); if you are one of the have-nots. This too seeps into another example of Search's hypocrisy. While some leaders are viewed as indispensable, many longtime and dedicated employees just under that level are suddenly fired. One day all is well, the next thing they know, this is there last week. These are employees who have dedicated their lives to this organization and are sent away in the most undignified fashion. But Search's biggest hypocrisy is that as a whole, the leadership does not live the mission and values that they preach. They preach empathy and yet many senior leaders are wildly not empathetic. They preach the importance of having everyone's voice heard yet they exclude many employees from important decisions that affect their lives and work. They preach accountability and yet there is only accountability for those who are not the chosen ones. Employees are constantly implored to live the values and mission, to be so dedicated that life should become work. Some senior leaders even describe it positively as cultish. Yet there is no reward to the many employees that do try to live the organization's values and in fact, are sometimes chastised for doing so. As a whole, the culture is just awful. While many lower and mid-level employees are very supportive of each other, the necessity to comes from working in a terrible environment. Comradely is often bred from common misery. Nobody takes a minute to breathe, most eat lunch every day in front of their computers. Most come in before 9 and stay way after 5, in addition to working weekends. And while leadership is "committed" to not making this the norm, it is and leadership has done more to reinforce this than change it. Though one might say, "you do not have to answer emails after hours or on vacation," because everyone else is, it becomes the tacit expectation. As one leader once summed it up, to paraphrase, "work-life balance is not real." All of this would be fine if I had been paid a livable wage. All this would be fine if MOST employees were paid a livable wage. I gave this job all I had and still couldn't pay my rent. That is not right. And when I asked for a reasonable salary, nothing over the top, I received very discouraging answers. I made my needs very clear but it seemed that the higher-ups were more than happy to let me walk than be open to getting me to a point where I could simply live. This would be fine if there was some standardization among how people are paid. Instead, wages vary for employees on the same level, seemly at random. The criteria for salary changes depending on who you ask. Some say a Masters degree matters and others say it does not. Some say that the time you've worked there matters or your previous experience matters until someone with much less experience gets hired at your level for much higher pay. None of this would matter if I or many of my former colleagues saw a clear way forward, a way to grow, move up the latter, and become a better professional. But there is no clear path. Everything is stagnate. While there is always a promise of professional development, leadership fails to come through. At Search for Common Ground, there are the haves and the have-nots. If you are a have, you still have to fight for every promotion, raise, etc. but you do eventually get it. If you have a have-not, its either deal or leave. And if you leave, they are more than happy to replace you with someone even cheaper. Working at Search is emotionally taxing. Slowly one's raison d'etre slowly deteriorates. One wakes up in the middle of the night asking if anything they do matters, if anyone cares, if they are just wasting their time in the pursuit of a better world? As many beams of light try to penetrate, one becomes eaten by the darkness and negativity that is the work environment at Search. While many wonderful colleagues take the time to get to know you, to help you grow, to take the time and hear your concerns, to comfort you in times of need, it is so often drowned out by the darkness cast by the people with the power. For all the inspiring people and stories one comes across, they can only serve as fuel for so long when one is constantly drained by everything else around them.

Search suffers from chronic dysfunction at multiple levels, ranging from financial non-compliance (and even corruption in some cases), to crippling debt, a constantly shifting senior management structure, decrepit office spaces, and a lack of good systems and processes across the board. The organization has been teetering on the edge of financial insolvency for years and is only being kept on life support thanks to millions of dollars in donations by Board members. Only recently has a bank been confident enough to offer the organization a line of credit. Search relies heavily on entry- and mid-level staff, yet barely pays its headquarters employees enough to survive DC's high cost of living, which is 60% higher than the rest of the country. When adjusted for cost of living, an associate-level employee at Search makes the equivalent of $19,000/year, with managers making only a little more. HR has promised that salaries have been benchmarked to industry rates, and yet those rates are kept behind closed doors. Some deeper research, however, reveals that the majority of lower- and mid-level positions are being paid $10,000-30,000 less/year than at comparable peer organizations, which means the benchmarks are being low-balled or perhaps disregarded altogether. At the same time, staff at the Director level and above earn in the solid six figures, which depletes lean budgets and leaves little left to compensate lower-level staff fairly. Senior staff regularly charge their time to non-compliant budget lines because their salary level cannot be absorbed elsewhere. Search has laid out a bold strategic plan that includes targeting some of the most fragile and insecure conflict geographies. While this strategy is laudable, decisions to work in certain dangerous and volatile areas have been made over-confidently and ad hoc without a full assessment of risks or a clear security plan. Doing so severely jeopardizes staff safety on the ground. Anyone who has been at Search long enough will tell you that there is a clear and consistent pattern in the organization’s dysfunction. At least once per year, the organization hits a crisis point that will send leadership scrambling for solutions and assurances. A plan will be developed—whether firing new executives, acquiring new software, re-envisioning departments and roles, implementing new protocols, or setting organization-wide strategic objectives—and yet time and again these new measures fall flat on their face and roll straight into the next crisis point. It’s a vicious cycle, but turnover within the organization and on the Board of Directors, along with “talking a big talk” to peers and donors, keeps true accountability from being achieved. It’s a constant carrot on a stick that makes the organization feel incredibly fragile and on the edge of collapse.