Great place to work and grow - Program Manager Urban Libraries Council Employee Review

Hard to come up with any pros for working here. The library members are great, but the work environment is toxic.

Upper Management, including President/CEO (the title itself says something), is a nightmare to work for/with. They do not trust staff to do their jobs,but yet can not move things in order to actually produce work in a timely manner. Their writing and work product is stilted, incomprehensible and not innovative. Their understanding of technology and management is 20th century. The treatment of staff is appalling and the passive aggressiveness of upper management creates a very toxic environment. They think that staff doesn't know they are being passive aggressive which is laughable. The CEO goes out of her way to avoid conflict, so just ignores you if she is unhappy. The disrespect for staff is deplorable especially in public settings. There is mismanagement of the finances and no HR polices. The salary increases that the upper management gave themselves is worrisome since they are in a precarious financial position without the Gates funding (look at the 990s - they are public). They spend money on things that aren't important (meeting space, speakers, meals, etc.) to impress their members to the detriment of staff.

The work of public libraries is very important and exciting. Public libraries do a lot of good for a lot of people.

Extremely tense working environment for no reason. High turnover. No diversity. No personnel manual. No review process. Shoddy accounting and budgeting on the fly. Very poor and angry leadership. This is most likely due to executive leadership not being very smart or innovative. This is ironic since ULC offers an annual Innovations award to members for their programming. Executive leadership is adverse to new ideas especially in regards to technology. Staff has no autonomy. Wasteful spending. This is especially troubling since member dues come from public funds (city, federal, foundation, and state budgets). Examples of this are expensive hotel stays and fancy dinners. The board must be aware of this but also enjoys their perks. No benefits for member organizations. Biggest benefit is a listserv for the library directors. ALA and PLA do much more for their members. Join these groups instead if you are a library or librarian. This organization will likely go away after the Gates Foundation money is spent out. Lot of finger pointing will follow.