Oceana Reviews

• The opportunities listed above are not necessarily distributed evenly. An individual's opportunity to take advantage of these things often depends on their own awareness/initiative and their supervisor. • There is a severe lack of transparency around decision making in the organization. It’s unclear to staff why people at the same level across the organization are paid different salaries. If you want a promotion or raise, you must go through an exhausting process – lasting up to six months – where you are given inconsistent reasons as to why the organizations cannot pay you what you are asking. There have been many examples where some staff were told that what they were asking for was outside of their respective pay bands, while other staff pushing for the same position were told that there were no pay bands. Executive-level staff have even admitted that they do not understand how resources are allocated when it comes to these budgetary decisions. • There is no tangible commitment to values that executive leadership claim to care about. The first value is sustainability. Over my time there I watched passionate staff advocate for more sustainable office practices only to be consistently denied even an ear on the topic. The second and most notable are issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Staff formed an interdisciplinary grassroots group in 2019 to discuss DEI issues within the organization, and generated positive momentum. However, once specific recommendations were shared with leadership, this momentum stalled. Executive leadership have chalked this up to HR not having the time to follow through on these recommendations, but they also haven’t prioritized building the team’s capacity to increase their bandwidth. Another example is ethics. Oceana has an ethics statement that staff are required to agree to when they are hired. One of the sections, which is typical in many organizations, is related to nepotism. During my time, there were at least four instances of children of donors, executive leadership, or board members given temporary or permanent positions. Multiple staff sent in anonymous complaints regarding some of these positions, only to receive copy and pasted responses that didn’t always align with the complaint they even sent in. • The structure of the organization doesn’t seem to match its growth and operations. The CEO and President are too involved in day-to-day tasks and, as far as staff can tell, have not developed any long-term strategic plan or vision for the organization. There is no clear structure or project management system in place to coordinate multinational or cross-cutting initiatives, which is becoming an increasing proportion of Oceana’s work. The current organizational structure likely served well when Oceana was a smaller organization roughly 10 years ago, but now it seems to hinder rather than support the existing growth. Individually, these challenges are not dealbreakers. Collectively, though, they compound. For example, the lack of transparency in decision making (especially around pay) makes it difficult for staff with less financial means to take or keep a job with Oceana, since there is no clear understanding of your future pay prospects. Retention in the organization is poor within certain teams, and especially in the mid to early career individuals. Things are certainly better now than when I started, but the pace is glacial and there was no sign that leadership was planning to actually invest (as in with budget, full time staff, and the humility it takes to relinquish some control) in fixing some of these problems. Perhaps most concerning is that HR has been made aware of all these issues, whether through anonymous complaints via the EthicsPoint platform, in exit interviews, or through specific, direct feedback from both current and former employees. It’s unclear if HR takes these complaints to senior leadership or not, but either way the improvement is happening too slowly. Even with the improvements, it all felt reactionary rather than proactive which is particularly frustrating for an organization that advocates against that exact behavior from national governments that refuse to sustainably manage their natural resources.

Firstly, there is little room for advancement for early career individuals. The organization is top heavy, few positions in the middle, and numerous early-career folk. As many have commented before, leadership is poor and the very few early career people who are able to move up and receive a competitive salary are typically friends with their boss. Secondly, Oceana Headquarters DC is not the place for anyone who earned a doctorate. Someone with lower credentials, less work experience, but a friend of the boss will secure a better position than you. Unlike the other Oceana offices that place a higher value on science, the DC office will only hire a PhD when campaign/program wants to appear credible. Finally, salaries are not competitive with the market and there is a huge variance in salary for the same position within the organization.