Johnson County Library Reviews

Sort II, a massive reorganization of the library, has been a nightmare for years now and has killed any level of passion people had for this organization. It's created robust silos in how things are ran, and completely ignores the concepts of LEAP (Leadership Empowers All People) that the county and library profess to follow. Do not expect any role in a branch to be anything other than a cog in a machine to be worn down and replaced once failure sets in. Admin is not and cannot be trusted to do the right thing by employees. There are stories from every branch and long standing members of the staff about how certain members of Admin have retaliated against staff. I'll admit that I'm terrified to post this, but am sticking my neck out because I've been here long enough to see the light fade from every eye around me. County HR and Leadership needs to start focusing on the real problem entities, and it isn't rank-and-file staff. Related, it's amazing how Office Hours stopped when staff started poking holes in the Sort II plans, and it became less a collaborative effort, and turned into a "March to my drum." In past years, the direct branch managers that could be trusted to stand up for staff have been slowly replaced by spineless sycophants who keep pushing a corporatized work life on behalf of Admin. Branch management are now professional meeting goers, and have little to no idea on how to actually lead/motivate staff. They've been told that they're forbidden from spending any amount of time doing the work that their reports do. No front desk, no discharge, no programming. I ask, how can you manage people if you don't even know what they're doing anymore? Staff moral is dead. Not low. DEAD. Rank and file staff can't even trust direct managers to bring up how bad things are for fear of reprisal, and Admin thinks sending the County Librarian around to branches to "talk" will be enough to fix things. Failing to realize that nobody is going to be willing to stick their neck out to be honest in those moments. The lack of self-awareness by all members of Admin would be laughable if we weren't all so burnout and depressed. This place that used to be a beautiful place to work has become the epitome of "The beatings will continue until moral improves." And that's for FT staff. PT are treated like coal mine donkeys. Utterly disposable. P.S. In the reorganization, no front line staff got a raise when the job roles were redefined. Management did. And new management roles were added. This place is as corporate as I've ever seen it and it's killing it.

Where to begin. Management sets you up for failure at every step. They don't care about staff well being or safety. They make a big deal about consensus and leadership but they just at best ignore anyone who is not one of the administrators. The benefits are a joke. Management is generally petty. Management and admin will say offensive things and try to play them off as jokes frequently. Most staff are afraid to go forward to HR about it because staff that do have been retaliated against. Pay raises do not match inflation and are 2-3% at the highest end. part time staff are treated like garbage. Public service staff are rarely consulted about changes made that affect their jobs and are micromanaged by a very top heavy administration. Some branches have as many as 4 managers all in an open floor plan that spend all their time looking over your shoulder second guessing every action you take. System wide management will frequently give directions to staff that contradict what their supervisor tells them. Internal communication is either inaccurate and inconsistent across departments, or in too much detail and not relevant. A staff member was followed home by a patron and threatened, the patron was not banned. Another staff member was groped by a patron and management stated that it was the way she was dressed and she should've been more aware. Admin are fairly clueless and when forced to interact with the public take it out on public service staff. No matter what staff do or how well they do their jobs management will never have your back and will throw you under the bus to avoid looking bad. Major decisions are left up to meetings of manager groups that are unqualified and frankly idiotic, they spent most of the time in the weeds and arguing aboutthings that are not the problem, expand the project well beyond the original scope, come out with a half baked plan and throw it to the staff to figure out and make it work. Then when if fails they blame the workers and take credit to their bosses for their great plan. Also, they handled the Covid 19 crisis very poorly and furloughed staff despite having a large reserve in place to keep staff on. It is instead being spend on the second remodel of the central library in 5 years.