Company culture:
Leadership considers that “Working for The Shield" is a privilege and that there are numerous people lined-up waiting for every job. Accordingly, there is little incentive from their end to value staff and run a people-centric organization.
The League "runs lean" as a matter of course. This will generally equate to staff being overworked, with many critical roles being staffed by individuals that have no backup. Further, the League is hyper-reliant on contract staff, with little to no hope of these roles getting converted to FT status, resulting in a high level of turnover which further exacerbates pressure on the managers. More recently the approval process to onboard contractors has been made more burdensome and runs up to the highest level in the organization.
Being solicited during holidays, nights, PTO and leave is the norm and not responding will come with career consequences, immediate or over time.
Each office runs with a different sub-culture and codes, resulting in inconsistencies in the daily experience for employees of various offices.
Morale is low among current staff. Critical employees have been leaving the organization at a high pace leaving the remaining staff with increasing workloads that are already far beyond normal capacity. Generally, announcing a departure is greeted with congratulations by envious colleagues.
During the pandemic communication with leadership was very, very, sparse. All-staff meetings were extremely rare, as was communication from the commissioner. A stark contrast to colleagues or family working in organizations that went out of their way to increase communication, create a sense of community despite the situation and ensure that employees felt supported.
Growth/Evolution:
The League deprecates titles on entry and appears to run on a philosophy that one should perform an elevated job before any promotions may be considered. Why not, but in the facts of it staff will regularly end up performing functions far above their paygrade for very long stints of time (multiple years) without the corresponding compensation or titles.
The promotion process is nebulous at best. Some high performers remain unpromoted while other employees are, but there is no transparent process involving the employee. Accordingly, an unpromoted employee will not be provided with any feedback on the reasons or path to obtain it.
Many employee in senior level roles, throughout the organization, have been around for 15-20 years and are hanging on to their roles with little incentive to accept change. More recent employees see little opportunity for evolution and frequently run into walls when trying to promote new ideas, resulting in a high rate of turnover among staff with tenures of less than 5 years. This lack of renewal means that old habits die hard, that new ideas have little space for burgeoning and younger talent little opportunity to evolve.
Workplace policy:
The League decided to enforce 5 days per week, in office, as a mandatory policy. Despite the delta variant exceptions are few and far between, regardless of employees having young children at home and representing concerns about this. The League does offer 20 flex days to use throughout the 2021 season, but require manager approval and have to be logged in the PTO system, as are now travel days.
The whole policy and the way it has been enforced after many employees delivered exceptional work from home over 18 months has created a distrust in the organization and lowered morale even further than it already was.
Ability to execute:
The League has long drawn out processes for submission of proposals, budgets and plans. Director level staff is bogged down in creating presentation after presentation to propose innovative plans which rarely come to fruition.
The various League branches run in completely disparate ways, with redundant initiatives carried-out in silos and compound spend being accrued in multiple areas. Proposing initiatives for efficiency and streamlined processes is generally met with, at best, resistance, if not straight up opposition.