Meaningful Work, Awful Work Culture - Anonymous Center for Child Protection Employee Review

The people are nice, there's always room to grow or opportunities to move into new departments, and the work itself really matters. We actually see the children we're helping come through the doors every day. There are also a lot of staff activities and resources to promote connection and mental health wellness, which is helpful considering the heavy content we deal with.

Child abuse is obviously a hard topic to confront every day. As a non-profit, we also work with community members through the Board of Directors, and there can often be disconnect between their vision and the actual logistics of the day-to-day.

My direct coworkers were dedicated.

The problems here are structural and leadership-driven, and they ultimately pushed out experienced staff who had invested heavily in the organization. Pay is inequitable and dishonest. There is no clear pay structure. Some staff are significantly underpaid while others are not, with no transparency or logic to the disparity. We were told things about pay and job roles that turned out to be untrue. When leadership finally admitted the budget was in the negative, they still gave out bonuses to executives. Incoming management was unprofessional and dismissive. A new CDO came in and immediately disregarded everything the team had built, without taking the time to understand any of it. Rather than coming to us with “help me understand how this works so we can improve it”, she came in dismissive and confrontational. This new CDO came in and was rude to everyone, causing moral to drop. And valuable people to leave. She would talk about other teams and talk about our board members and donors. Anytime a concern was raised about the behavior of this manager it was dismissed. Unfortunately they have continues to let this happen severely impacting our donors, team, and new hires. Leadership skills are not prioritized. Managers don’t communicate well with each other. There are no 1-on-1s, so issues never get addressed proactively. Team members regularly take on responsibilities beyond their job descriptions to fill gaps — and that work goes unacknowledged. We raised concerns about staffing gaps multiple times and were not taken seriously. The team was pushed out rather than retained. It became clear that the goal was to displace our team, not develop it. When you raise concerns, disagree with a decision, or simply aren’t a “yes” person, that’s treated as a problem. Good people left because they weren’t valued. I will be leaving not because I want to leave the mission, but because I no longer feel respected or safe staying. The CEO is checked out and HR is not here to protect you and helped the new manager push staff out. Finding ways to purposely put them in uncomfortable positions. This is not a nonprofit I would work for again or. Recommend. DO NOT WORK HERE.