Creative Associates International

Oct 30th, 2021

Apr 23rd, 2021

Oct 11th, 2020

Jun 9th, 2020

Human Resources is Creative's Achilles' heel. It is disastrous to the point of being offensive. Staff have nowhere to turn with their problems because HR is entirely impotent, and you risk your own credibility by questioning anything as HR will just bury any problems and attempt to push those who complain out the door. It's just not worth the risk, so most staff turn to Glassdoor to voice their concerns. Sadly the organization is very aware of the reviews. Rather than address the issues, they advocate for the removal of reviews. Leaders "strongly encourage" staff to write positive reviews, which is why the positive ones so clearly signal duress. They aren't hard to pick out. It's tough to write a glowing review when you have zero experience to pull from. HR is a known challenge internally, but I would strongly recommend that readers speak with former staff before even considering joining the organization. It's easy enough to find former Creative staff to speak with on the matter if you're thinking of joining, and you may save yourself a long or short (as has been the case recently) spiral to the darker side of International Development. At the human level, It's a misogynistic culture on its best days with a peppering of racial bias and total disregard for culture or professional respect. All of this under the watchful eye of inept HR leadership apparently unencumbered by moral, ethical, or legal standards. So much so, in fact, that medical information about staff is thrown around with no concern for privacy standards or HIPAA laws. Private details about staff are used against them or shared with other staff creating tension and ultimately contributing further to a toxic workplace. It would be funny if it were in a sitcom (or maybe not), but most of us question how HR is allowed to continue to operate in this manner in the current social environment with no checks or balances. Firstly wake up! It's shocking (or morosely impressive) that Creative is able to recruit anyone in at this point, but maybe you should just ask your recruiters to stop. Ask them to stop lying to people about the culture, stop making excuses for outdated office culture, stop putting people in harm's way. Then, YOU should stop trying to fix the culture by constantly covering attrition and look at why people are leaving within weeks of walking in the door. Clean up your house starting with Human Resources. Hold people accountable for their behavior, stop vilifying anyone who speaks out or questions whether we might be able to do better because the reality is that you MUST do better. Your staff is running for the hills and you'll eventually run out of money to throw at the problem. OR..... maybe just do nothing erode yourself away and fall too far behind to ever catch up. The International Development space would be better off without you. Maybe we all would. Q: What's the fastest way to make a small fortune in International Development? A: Start with a large fortune and treat your people terribly I'd love to see the company succeed together rather than us all watching a family of owners stuff their pockets with taxpayer money on the backs of staff they care nothing about.
May 8th, 2021