Upstream USA reviews

4.1

75% would recommend to a friend

(48 total reviews)
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Mark Edwards

77% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

Upstream USA has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 48 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Upstream USA employee rating is 20% above average for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

48 reviews
1.0
Oct 9, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Well-resourced nonprofit, good benefits, coworkers are knowledgeable and care about the work.

Cons

Management’s openness to feedback is an illusion, as are its efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Patient voices – especially those from communities that have been historically targeted by coercive reproductive healthcare practices – are significantly underrepresented in leadership. I repeatedly witnessed and encountered resistance and retaliation in the workplace when this was called out. It's demoralizing for staff who were hired for their "diverse background" not to see themselves and their experiences reflected in positions of power. Furthermore, it often becomes the responsibility of those same individuals to advocate for their inclusion and growth within the organization. There are no growth opportunities or workplace flexibility for non-exempt, hourly staff. It’s a top heavy structure, and managers have very little support or training. As the organization expands, more levels of management and bureaucracy are built into teams.

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Upstream USA Response
6y
Thank you for sharing this difficult feedback. As a growing organization, we are prioritizing our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and how to ensure it is authentically represented throughout every part of our organization. In addition to ongoing and routine reviews of our hiring and internal practices and policies, we are prioritizing and investing resources to support the leadership and capacity of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee which is comprised of internal employees from all levels of the organization. We humbly recognize that this work is a journey, and we are grateful to our team members who are growing with us and helping us to improve.
3.0
Mar 30, 2023

Good mission, lacking diversity

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent pay and benefits. Fair and generous COLA increase yearly.! Great people that genuinely care about the work, someone is always available and willing to help guide you through very confusing systems that exist within the organization. Time to connect with team through themed retreats throughout the year .

Cons

Heavy meeting culture, meeting free Friday is often not honored. Supervisors micromanage professionals with 15 years of experience and do not allow autonomy . Extreme lack of diversity, Upstream is extremely white and female by their own accounts. It is unclear what steps and avenues they are taking to actually diversify recruitment efforts to ensure a more diverse workforce . Staff are often unaware of their own implicit bias and this manifests in the form of serious microagressions. It is also disturbing that unplanned pregnancies impact black and brown communities at disproportionate numbers but you can count on two hands the black and brown people doing the direct work at Upstream. Most of the black and brown staff on PT team are in lower level positions, and there are no directors of color.

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Upstream USA Response
3y
Thanks for sharing your experience working at Upstream. We are glad you appreciate our competitive salary and compensation structure, our generous COLA increases, our comprehensive healthcare benefits and that you enjoy working with our great staff! In order to ensure opportunities for training, teaming and togetherness, our leadership team believes it is essential to gather in person twice a year. This is part of our culture! Upstream is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion (ED+I) as a cornerstone of our work to increase equitable access to the full range of contraception methods nationwide. EDI requires a willingness to listen, reflect, and change so we build a culture that celebrates and serves everyone. These values are a part of our core operating principles. We strive for diversity, mitigating bias and take an intentional approach to include individuals from underserved populations in our candidate pipelines for all open roles and will continue to make diversity sourcing a priority. We are proud of the diversity of our leadership team and are committed to improving the diversity at all levels of our organization. Our recruiting team is deeply committed to our EDI priorities and we are making progress everyday. Our meeting free Fridays are valued by all employees, but occasionally the needs of the organization and our healthcare center partners may be prioritized over our meeting free Friday schedule. If you feel that Friday meetings are no longer an exception but a pattern, we would encourage you to reach out to your people manager, our human resources team or our VP of Equity Diversity and Inclusion, where you can also discuss any concerns you may have around any implicit bias or micro-aggressions you may have experienced or witnessed. We take these concerns very seriously and conduct mandatory microaggression training for all staff members.
2.0
Feb 14, 2022

Veering off mission

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Many passionate people on staff, decent compensation/benefits for a non-profit, good mission (if they stick to it), opportunity for career progression

Cons

toxic culture, hierarchical structure with good ideas dying from needing to go through so many layers (lost its ability to be nimble), struggling to navigate their work amidst pandemic related healthcare fatigue/bandwidth issues, very disappointing on EDI (staff pushed for years but no change/promises of senior staff hire not materialized), lack of accountability/reward for bad behavior, micro-managers. All this has meant large/frequent staff turnover

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Upstream USA Response
4y
Thank you for taking the time to post a review on Glassdoor. As a valued employee, we really appreciate your recognition of the many passionate people at our organization, our robust benefit package, competitive compensation and our approach to career growth and progression for our employees at Upstream. Please know we value your frank feedback regarding our culture and evolving work environment. We believe in listening and learning. A lot of work has been made in critical areas to build us for scale and expansion. These transformations are a journey - and we appreciate the spots that may feel tough. This is where we have worked very hard to communicate the journey and milestones ahead. Equally, we encourage our employees to reach out to their leadership team or anyone on our new People Experience team (including our Chief People Officer) with any concerns for deeper clarity so we can work towards finding resolution. Our newly designed organizational structure and leadership team has been intentionally established to improve decision making, further strengthen our organizational stability, culture and our approach to advancing our work with our healthcare center partners during these pandemic times. Building a strong EDI approach at our organization is a journey and there have been several accomplishments over the past 6 months alone which we shared and are committed to the future work as part of the EDI roadmap and accountabilities. Our newly created OneUpstream Values drive us collectively every day. These were created by Upstreamers!! No organization is perfect but they represent who we are and what we strive to be! We are laser focused as an organization on strengthening reproductive care and reducing unplanned pregnancies across the U.S. Our mission is our Northstar and it guides all we do as an organization. Thanks again for your feedback. We consistently review all comments to understand experiences and learnings!
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Glassdoor has 51 Upstream USA reviews submitted anonymously by Upstream USA employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Upstream USA is right for you.