Dear Ms. Communicate,
A number of friends who work for NGOs have told me horror stories about their working conditions. It seems that having a progressive mandate for changing the outside world is no guarantee against highly problematic internal dynamics and plain old power trips by those at the top of the hierarchy.
Are the organizations of the left that have paid staff mere Potemkin villages masking business as usual? What can/should be done to hold progressive organizations accountable for their employee relations?
Dear Wondering,
The problems as I see them are multitude. I'll address the two big ones that I've found over the years. First is that most lefty organizations hire from within, and promote from within. This often means that managers and supervisors don't have the required experience and skill sets and they often receive little to no training. A recipe for disaster if you ask me, which of course you did.
Second is role confusion and lack of clarity in expectations. Staff are often expected to earn relatively low wages, which they accept because "the work is so important" and they are "doing what they love". This reality is used to exploit the labour (unpaid overtime for example) of good-hearted staff. The other side of this is that in lefty/progressive organizations, staff can often feel a disproportionate sense of entitlement and power over decisions that are not in their scope to make (hirings and firings, for example).
For me accountability comes with clarity. Role clarity between staff, managers, and the board of directors, (There are often BODs associated with lefty organizations). Also, clarity of expectations, clarity of job responsibilities, lines of communication, lines of accountability, decision-making, regular staff evaluations, all that "boring" and "mainstream" management stuff. To me this doesn't make lefty organizations poseurs, it makes them stronger organizations.
