Rural Development Network Reviews

Pay is low. The leadership team doesn’t have the training or experience to be leading the organization. There is preferential treatment for the ‘yes people’ vs those who try to create an open environment to provide constructive feedback to improve the org. Leadership refuses to listen to any constructive feedback that they construe as negative. Some people and teams are overworked and burnt out and leadership does nothing to mitigate or prevent it or support their staff. The organization and leadership team seem ineffective in sustaining their funding and programs. They did a mass layoff in September 2023 and another one in March 2024 while still maintaining their leadership team. They expect the laid off staff to increase their workloads and cross-train during the remainder of their working notice periods while giving no thought or care for transition planning otherwise. They also laid off positions they desperately need while retaining positions they don’t - they can’t seem to do adequate resource planning. Don’t be fooled by its positive front, this organization is not how they try to represent themselves.

They don’t accurately plan their contracts or projects to adequately fund the organization or bring on enough staff to adequately support the work. There is little to no work-life balance, staff are banking in excess of 30 hours per month as a regular occurrence. They also expanded fairly quickly, but are now laying off staff in droves because they don’t have the funding to maintain their programs. In these scenarios, it’s always the lower level staff that are laid off and leadership remains status quo. They have roughly five directors for 15 staff. It’s incredibly top heavy. Management doesn’t listen to concerns and glosses over any constructive feedback as being sour grapes despite it coming from multiple sources. Their HR director has no formal HR training and is part of slt, which is a serious conflict of interest.