WestEd reviews

Thank you for your candid feedback, and thank you also for your work with WestEd so far. I’m pleased that you value your colleagues so highly, as WestEd does: we know our work is impossible without our supportive and hard-working people. I would also like to address your comment that there is no paid maternity/paternity leave. To do so, I am quoting directly from a recent “Ask Glen” answer that our CEO, Glen Harvey, addressed to all employees: “As an organization, WestEd provides a very generous maternity leave/newborn bonding program. WestEd does provide a maternity leave program that includes a paid benefit for up to 4 weeks prior to date of birth and 8 weeks following date of birth for all eligible employees regardless of which state they work in. For employees in California, employees are also eligible for a state paid pregnancy disability leave for the same period noted above and all California employees are entitled to 6 weeks of paid family leave, which includes newborn bonding as well as time off to care for an eligible family member for other types of leaves. A handful of other states including Hawaii, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New York also provide paid leave at this time. In addition to the paid leave benefits available to employees, job protections for extended leaves include up to 7 months for pregnancy disability/maternity leave in California and up to 12 weeks for other states although WestEd is almost always more generous than what is required if requested. All paid or unpaid leaves can be supplemented by an employee's sick and/or vacation leave balances up to 100% of salary. Family leave is one of many benefits WestEd provides. We have to strike a balance across all staff priorities and needs and the costs that we can fairly expect our clients to absorb. With health care costs continuing to rise, we would have to make very difficult decisions about asking staff to cover more of their own health care costs, if we were to expand our family leave benefits further.” I encourage you to speak directly with our friendly Human Resources team if you have any questions about leave options. Thank you again for your work with WestEd.

Thank you for your candid feedback about your experience working at WestEd. We always appreciate hearing from our current employees, and want to thank you for the hard work you do improving educational access and quality for teachers and learners. I am glad you recognize the talented individuals who work here. It is important to recognize that the term “management” can mean several things, and it is not entirely clear from your comment what level of management within the organization you refer to. Glen and the entire Executive Team work hard to help foster a sense of trust in WestEd and across and within individual programs. It is important to remember that WestEd spans multiple states with a diverse employee population all of whom are included in the “bureaucracy” of which you write. To that end, we often have some tradeoffs for our continuous growth and increasing revenue each year. Being a Joint Powers Agency (JPA) means that we have a different set of rules that govern us, versus other similar research organizations. Some are distinct advantages. Other rules and regulations, however, may be much more complicated and insert a set of standards that may at times seem cumbersome. Though the Executive Team is working towards a more flexible approach to the work we do, certain programs have more ability to change than others based on who the funders are and where the work takes place. We appreciate your suggestion to make it easier to work across programs; this in particular is a goal for the near future. Again, thank you for your feedback and we hope that you will continue to communicate regarding your areas of concern. We encourage all employees to discuss their concerns with Glen Harvey using her open-door policy, with their manager and with Human Resources.