Pros
The vast majority of staff are incredibly passionate and skilled people. There are some incredibly innovative ideas taking place, and their staff networks are excellent. Training delivery is fantastic, and there’s been a lot more investment into previously under-resourced areas like HR, Research, and Comms. Service delivery is fantastic and many staff working with service users have incredible emotional intelligence. Every day is different and very interesting work. Compared to most other jobs, LGBTQ+ people can be far more open about themselves and meet other staff with similar experiences.
Cons
Senior management (ie the top four people) make rash decisions in isolation and do not involve even other senior staff. They have moved to casualising and underpaying a lot of jobs that involve working with the most marginalised members of LGBTQ+ community members. They are unfortunately not investing in community work and are not being honest with their service users about the removal of posts relating to marginalised communities. White men are continuously protected when they are discriminatory in management and trustees. The organisation has a consistent issues with misogyny and ableism, that HR are trying to address but don’t receive support from senior management, as they are also involved. While they did commit to anti-racism work a few years ago, they have not continued this work for some time and due to high turnover of staff the impact of this will fade quickly. Trans and non-binary staff make up a large proportion of staff, which is really positive, but almost all are in low-paid, highly demanding jobs and are often overlooked for promotion, given a lot of extra work outside of their job role, and treated as incompetent by some staff. The organisation is moving towards more corporate practices towards its staff and management have been challenged recently by the union around dishonest presentation of how much funding they have available for paying staff.