Catholic Relief Services reviews

The culture in Baltimore - and in remote US offices - is horrendously depressing and petty. I've never experienced anything like it. Lots of employee turnover, and when people leave sometimes they're traumatized by the backstabbing. No one is safe, and management as well as HR doesn't seem to care at all about abusive, exploitive, disincentivizing behavior among staff. Gossip is rampant and entire employee reviews can be written up by a supervisor based on innuendo or falsehood and the staff member is powerless. Smart, talented, good hearted people aren't appreciated, and bullies and sycophants run the place.

The overall culture of the organization is dismal. People are overworked, often asked to do two jobs for the pay of one. Very little respect is given to employees who do a good job or to older workers who have a depth of experience. It has become a place where the more you do, the more gets piled on you. Promotion depends not on what you know and do but who you know. People are brought in for interviews but management already knows who they are going to give the open position to, usually one of their buddies!!! Older employees are "encouraged" to retire as there is definitely a youth culture. Political correctness is overblown to the point of being restrictive! Management is not supportive of people they direct. The HR staff is inflated to the point of no one takes responsibility to actually support existing staff and questions are handed off to others - often 4 or 5 times - before an employee can get an answer...and often that answer is "go to the self help section on the intranet and you will find your answers." I worked at CRS for more than 15 years and saw the culture deteriorate from a warm friendly place to work to a cut-throat corporate culture where very little value was placed on employees with depth of experience. Sad as it used to be a good place to work. The way it is now, I would never recommend it to anyone as a good place to work. Too much stress, too little recognition for a job well done.