Pros
CPC is an organization that was founded to maintain Central Park after years of neglect by the NYC Parks Department. The mission continues only because of a few loyal, dedicated and professional staff members.
Cons
At a recent “employee engagement” only members of the senior staff spoke on stage. You wouldn’t know by looking at the stage that there are women VP’s on the senior staff: a senior staff consisting of 3 men and 3 women. The only people on the stage speaking were the: President (male), CFO (male) and COO (male). If that doesn’t tell you what kind of organization this is, nothing will. Merit pay does not exist. They follow NYC/Park rules for raises not because they have to, but because they want the disparity in pay. The senior staff believes that they are the only reason the Park looks great and not the people who actually work in the park. This leads to a lack of caring by middle management. They do not hold employees accountable for their lack of work performance. And sadly, HR promotes this as well. HR exists only to protect the senior staff. They do not help or support middle management and below. Certain departments are never culled for poor performance. It’s baffling to watch certain department leaders continue to tolerate employees who are late every day and when they do show up, do very little work or are unable to complete simple work related tasks. This happens in many departments but most notably in HR, Finance and PDC. 10% of the employees at the corporate office could be terminated and work would continue as usual. And yet, the recent round of firings mainly targeted 1 department and left the corporate offices controlled by the CFO and COO virtually untouched. Bad leadership allows poor performance to continue and resentment to fester for those who actually want to work. Allowing “favor” hires for non-existing positions just to appease donors also produces resentment. No one wants to work with someone who was hired as a favor. Chances are, they have no clue how to do their job and are just showing up for a paycheck (or food in some cases). Ironically, they prefer to hire former NYC Parks employees. They prefer to hire employees from the very same organization that could not manage the park and in fact, destroyed the park. And they promote them to higher positions than what they qualify for. The obsession with hiring parks employees will be the downfall of CPC. They should also stop using surveys and consultants only to be told that the senior staff is the problem and then do nothing about it. How many employee surveys do they need before the reality of how bad things are begins to sink in? If you don’t want to know the truth, stop with the anonymous surveys. You know the truth, deal with it. And the employees have finally realized they are not anonymous and no longer want to do them. After the recent round of firings in which 8% of the staff was fired, it is interesting to note that news articles stated the Board members were displeased with the negative reviews on Glassdoor. Many of the negative reviews were directed at the President, CFO and COO, yet they all remain with the company. So what exactly was accomplished? Have the overpaid top 3 senior staff (all males) eliminated after a devastating financial loss last year and negative reviews? No. Instead, the Board allowed the same people who received the most complaints to decide who would be fired. If money was the issue for the layoffs, shouldn’t they have targeted the highest paid employees with the most complaints who actually caused the financial loss? How about targeting the senior staff that have exceeded their usefulness, hold long standing grudges, and have become obstructionists with bloated unreasonable salaries? The Board has saved the very people who are destroying the organization. Does the Board think that the guy who picked up garbage in the Park was fired by the COO because he was responsible for the $40m loss last year?