Like many of its competitors, one of Westat's major weaknesses is managing people. I'd never seen this level of mismanagement before. Managers did not provide information employees needed to carry out their job duties. They did not provide feedback in a timely fashion. They were verbally abusive, and could not accept any feedback.
They certainly couldn't manage teams. Communication overall was very poor. Many times when an employee initiated contact with someone outside of their group, for the purpose of completing a work task, a manager would criticize the employee and tell her that it wasn't her job to talk to that person. There was a lot of waste of employee's time, company resources, and when confronted, managers claimed they knew nothing. Another thing, favoritism was king. Managers had their favorites, everyone knew it, and if you weren't on the list you suffered.
Watch out for review time! They will hit you with negative feedback that you knew nothing about. They tell many people at all levels that they are not performing up to expectations for their grade level. They also identify areas for improvement, that for most people were areas of strength at other jobs. The excuse - oh we do things differently here at Westat.
Do not be lulled into the promise that Westat will find you a job within Westat if your contract has ended. For the past half year they've been laying people off. They aren't winning as many contracts, and there are a lot of employees sitting around with nothing to do. They are continuing to lay people off.
