Historic Bethlehem Partnership Reviews

Management overworks lower level employees and treats them very poorly (underpays them, poor hours, bad treatment overall). Upper management is incredibly tone deaf, both in their marketing and in their interactions with employees. No room for growth and no opportunities to advance. Taking the initiative with even the smallest projects is punished harshly - this is an incredibly cookie-cutter and narrow-minded organization in their approaches to technology, history, public history, public interaction, and museum/historical society organization in general. It's also an incredibly disorganized institution - if it seems organized, it is a façade (below the surface, and in the back room, people are loosing their minds and unable to juggle everything happening in an organization that is understaffed, holding onto outdated curation and docent practices, and almost totally technologically illiterate). All of these factors make them difficult to work with and for and the most unfortunate aspect is that it sheds a very poor light on the city of Bethlehem overall.

The management here is pretty bad, to be honest. A lot of pressure is put onto middle management and many of our supervisors end up working very late into the night due to the absurd number of responsibilities assigned to one person. Many of the "orders" and marketing that come from the top can seem tone deaf and out of touch with our audiences which is very frustrating when your job is to interact with the public every day. I feel HBP is straying from its historical mission which seems to be frustrating a number of staff members and visitors alike. There isn't much room for advancement here as it seems they would rather hire people from outside than extend opportunities to current employees.