The specific department is rife with many issues, and is mainly plagued by biases, lack of communication from the key staff and managers that delegate work, and a severe lack of mentorship and support for lower level staff, especially for survey assistants and survey coordinators. Any person interested in this role should first understand that it is dependent on billable hours; that is, each hour worked must be assigned to a task or project in your timesheet. My experience in this role was tainted by a continuous cycle of being consumed by too much work and then having too little work and having to beg unresponsive managers for work to cover my billable hours. Oftentimes, staff were expected to work after hours and weekends to accommodate projects despite having already met the hours and workload. Even while consumed by work, staff were expected to line up future work for themselves knowing that they would often have to overcommit themselves to projects. This issue was made even more difficult by managers and directors that held work for themselves and were unwilling to pass off simple tasks despite having received emails from staff asking for work.
This issue of mismanagement was further exacerbated by a company culture that does not allow staff to provide feedback to their managers or project directors for issues regarding workload or even problematic behavior from colleagues. While working in this position, I was often micro-aggressed by managers and directors that I relied on for work and management was unequipped to deal with these issues. When bringing up workplace issues, they were often brushed off as unimportant or followed up by managers claiming they did not have time to deal with these issues. In addition, there are policies in place that do not allow for lower level staff to speak directly with researchers, and is essentially an environment where you do not speak unless spoken to directly. This in turn allowed for projects issues and deliverables to be delayed and staff feedback on improvements to be ignored for the sake of procedure and control over communication by directors and managers.
In terms of mentorship, there is little opportunity to receive formal mentorship and training in this position and it is dependent on working with specific individuals that often favor working with the same individuals or are too busy to answer emails. Overall, the culture of this department and company needs a shift to prioritizing the need for understanding how to equitable support staff and to eliminate favoritism from the process of assigning and delegating work, providing opportunities for mentorship and growth, and receiving and providing feedback from staff.
