Rainforest Alliance reviews

RA has absolutely no insight capacity, for the past 3-4 years they have been in serious financial strain, and they continue to spend irresponsibly. Some of their leadership layoff/hiring decisions seem to have been complete sabotage on themselves. Managers have no clue on how to handle staff. Feelings and friendships seem to prevail, making this organization a total failure as a workplace. This failed management, which goes to the very top has a very distinct trait. Leadership has chosen (or inherited) certain staff and will only listen to them. Not seeing that these very people distort reality to suit their personal interests, and have made RA spiral down faster than it would have organically due to poor management. There is no strategy and no real business plan. It was very clear in layoffs that occurred in the last 2 years. It seemed to be a few behind closed doors randomly choosing who got laid-off and who didn’t. Only for other departments to complain about being overworked or having good performers being laid off. With the claim that they don’t want to run like a business, they have driven this poor organization into a ditch so deep, it probably will be very hard to dig itself out of.

Upper and middle management have no real background in business, which is required at an organization of this size. This causes problems all over including poor focus on core areas, ignoring growing problems, etc. As others have said, there is a huge disconnect from those positions and more entry level staff. The largest issue is a complete lack of career advancement opportunities. You will not get promoted unless you fight tooth and nail for it, and even then it will take years. Managers often do not think about the needs of their employees and are only looking for performance metrics.