Skyland Trail
10 Worst Places To Work In Atlanta - Skyland Trail
Skyland Trail
George West Mental Health Foundation
1903 North Druid Hills Rd.
Atlanta, Georgia United States
Phone: 4043158333
www.skylandtrail.org
An UN-Equal Opportunity, For profit "non-profit" Employer
Skyland Trail, Atlanta GA – Bitter staff, preoccupied ($$$) executive leadership, ineffective management, poor treatment of staff, several claims of racial discrimination all affect client recovery and adds to the bill for treating clients.I am an employee of an Atlanta-based NPO, George West Mental Health Foundation d/b/a Skyland Trail. I've only been here a couple of years on the clinical side yet it seems as though I've watched the entire evolution of man happen here with all the comings-and-goings of staff. In fact, I haven't seen this high an attrition rate in my 20-year career. At any given time 25% of the staff is either being welcomed aboard, being wished a farewell or in some cases, just come up missing with no further explanation. I mean, are these people still alive? What happened to them? Should we all be concerned?
Should a Mental Health Foundation – a clinical operation dedicated to the treatment of mental health disorders, experts in the field of counseling, nationally recognized for building self-esteem, problem resolution and restoring quality of life – have so many problems with employee satisfaction? Many of the employees have established relationships with clients and deal with them professionally on a daily basis. Can a someone please respond with how this revolving door of staff affects a client when their treatment team is continually changing? Maybe this is a question for our Medical Director, Dr. Raymond (Ray) Kotwicki, MD, MPH.
Some of the problems can be attributed to the Executive Team. Basically, the team is comprised of 4 people: Elizabeth (Beth) Finnerty-Martin, John (Ricky) Padgett, Dr. Raymond Kotwicki, MD, MPH, and a new addition, Connie Lombardo.
Beth works really hard at satisfying the board and pushing to get our many millions of dollars in the door. If you only knew what kind of requests the board makes (esp. Mr. Mark West) you'd fall out of your chair. She is so focused on satisfying him and his friends (i.e. Board of Director's) that I don't think she realizes that her interaction with staff from an operational stance is limited to basically one meeting every 3 months. These meetings are two-fold. 1. We see that she's still alive and breathing; 2. We get to find out the winner of these two awards (completely rigged) for employee and client recognition. Then we go around the room and a token four or five of the executive team's favorites speak out about their respective areas of accomplishment and Beth quickly tells them, "thank you guys for all you do for Skyland Trail" – the usual. The meeting quickly comes to a halt and we waste a few hundred on bad food.
John (Ricky) Padgett is the company's CFO. It is his job to make sure that all the bases are covered and that the company remains in good financial and operational standing despite some of the "questionable transactions". He presents himself to be this down-to-earth, country, hospitable, everyday kinda guy – but just wait until the shows over and the curtain falls. He is everything but those four descriptors. You see, he has a certain social circle at work. With him you're either in – or you're out. When you're in (and I've been "in" at one point), life is bliss and you enjoy the all of privileges he can offer. One of them is bigger annual raises (trust me, the people that get them don't have a problem letting us 3%-ers know about it); regular promotions; constant acknowledgement for great effort by the executive team; and additional liberties like comp-time, budgetary flexibility, etc. The rest of us ("outs" - yeah, I'm an "out" right now) get the opposite.
Dr. Raymond (Ray) Kotwicki, MD, MPH is a good guy… until you get on his bad side – better yet, if Ricky or Beth have it out for you, you better be sure that he'll have it out for you too. They kind of operate like a 3-headed beast. He's hardly ever at work and does ¼ of the work he originally was hired to do. Yet, he's continually praised? I'm sure the guy's salary is minimum six-figures for 10 hours per week? How can a non-profit justify this?
Connie Lombardo is kinda "not so much". She is our VP of marketing and development. She's been here half a year, and she hasn't raised a single penny of new capital? It makes me wonder what the heck she does all day beside harass her staff with administrative tasks she feels she's too good to execute (like stamp an envelope), micromanagement like you wouldn't believe and a totally fake personality that kind of makes you cringe when you speak with her. She is very deceptive and will cover up her mistakes by placing the blame on her staff and others. Is this an example a leader should be setting? A friend of mine that works in that building has constant complaints about watching her unfairly distribute work among her staff, instances of discrimination, and she even goes as far as being just downright condescending and rude - I've seen it for myself. She apparently thinks she walks on water (and so do Beth and Ricky, both of whom give her constant praise). But, if a person can perform these miracles, shouldn't we have pulled in at least $500.00 in new revenue from her efforts? I don't get it. I'm sure she's close to the top and from my view (and my co-worker's view) her salary is a complete waste! Even if she only made $350, 000 per year, we just wasted $175, 000 in six months!!! How can we, as a non-profit, justify this? -Oh yeah, I think she's been designing envelopes or something for the past couple of months. And she's doing a great job? Connie Lombardo. Great name.
Other complaints include a worthless benefits package, unfair treatment among staff, uneven workload distribution, a huge divide in salary between staff and management (from what I read, someone in HR is constantly sending HR print jobs to our pirnter LOL) and the company refuses to promote from within (except if you're on the A-list). Skyland Trail is a clinical operation that has a primary care clinic built-in to its program, yet staff cannot get adequate medical needs of their own met? I know several employees that need medical attention but cannot afford to pay the high deductibles and the bills that will result in seeking medical attention. This has been in the top 5 main complaints for a number of years, yet it remains to be unrecognized by the executive team. Why even ask us to fill out employee surveys if the plan is ultimately doing nothing with the information? This is like the fourth one I've submitted with the same crap on it. Maybe I should submit my concerns to the board - or better yet, to our donors. Our finance people and executive staff would probably all jump out the window at the same time.
There have been numerous openings that would allow staff to grow into positions that provide a better wage and an opportunity for career advancement. It has been a trend for the company to continually choose to hire under qualified, outside candidates instead of seeking qualified in-house staff to promote despite the employees' constant applications to these openings. I don't get it. What's the problem? It is a common understanding among staff that the only way to advance is to seek employment with another company, yielding a very high attrition rate. In all, the company would much rather hire and train an under qualified candidate from outside the organization as opposed to recognizing the good work and capabilities of existing staff.
I believe this can be a great company if the games would stop at the upper levels. The belittling and condescending attitude from management has to stop in order to get back to the business of rehabilitating our clients. How can staff of a mental health organization effectively treat clients while suffering from mental and emotional stress? Our clients end up suffering greatly and their treatment plans drag out because of the constant instability. What's greater is the cost incurred by our clients and their families in paying for the additional time for their family member to recover in our program. This is a shame and a great disservice to our community. It is my wish that our executive team and the board would connect at the ground-floor level and resolve these issues, treat people fairly and run this as a mental health rehabilitation center it's named to be and not just a cash cow.
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Having worked at Skyland Trail for almost a year before I was suddenly and unexpected for "unsatifactory work performance", I completely agree with this bloggers comments. I have worked in the non-profit/MH field for over 10 years. In that time period I have never recieved anything but exemplary Performance Evaluations, let alone been terminated for "unsatisfactory work performance" with no explanation given as to what was "unsatifactory". Skyland Trail presents the organization as one built on compassion and community involvement, when in fact, Skyland Trail does not care at all about staff members mental or physical well-being. All one needs to do is take a stroll through the administrative offices to see teh strained, anxious, worried looks on staff members faces. Employees are commended for working 10-12 hour days and on weekends and are not given equitable flex/comp time for overtime worked. For example, if an employee works both on Saturday and Sunday, after having worked a 5 day work week, he/she only gets 1 day of comp leave for the 2 extra days worked. Upper level mgt. appear manic and overwhelmed at times, often late for meetings and commenting on having worked at night and on weekends to "get caught up". A balance of work and family obligations is not encouraged. If an employee is sick or injured, even with proper documentation from a Physician, that employee is penalized for being absent from work. Staff turnover is abnormally high. Staff members dissapear, with nice little emails stating that he/she "left to pursue other opportunities"; a nice way to say that he/she was fired or forced to resign. I am one of the Ghost employees of Skyland Trail. After suffering a serious illness and then subsequently a serious physical injury, which I incurred while working, I was terminated due to excess absenteeism, even though each of my absences was covered by a note from my Physician and approved by my supervisor. If you are considering employment at Skyland Trail, carefully consider. Read all of the blogs available on the web about others experiences. Even though I was terminated and I am a single mother, wondering how I am going to find employment in this economy, I still find a sense of relief that I do not have to walk back into that horrible place. Clients are nothing more than $ signs and staff is useful as long as they can produce or overproduce. I hope the West Family sees what is going on at Skyland Trail and stops it before it is too late. Skyland Trail is a rigid, old-fashioned, uncomfortable work environoment, with a horrible benefits package and no regard for employee satisfaction. But it is all tied up in a nice gold bow for the rich of Atlanta to contribute to and attend the over-the-top fund-raising events. Employees and potential clients beware.
As I read other reviews of this place I am just reminded of what I go through everyday still there as a daytreatment patient. The effort put into groups are a disgrace. The groups are over full where people have to sit on the floor. Needless to say, not everyone gets a chance to speak in the 45 minutes. I went to a group today where we read a PSALM. I am not Christian...it was incredibly innapropriate. The music therapist at Skyland is highly underqualified for the job. His education in music is zero, that is from his lips. In one group, the counselor said the words, I don't know what I'm doing. It's like she forgot she had to teach the group that day. But after four weeks of attending the class, I realized it was like that everytime. They might know your name there, but you are a number. If you do not fit their mold of treatment you are suggested to leave and go somewhere else. Stay away from residential treatment, the staff that work at those buildings are rude, condescending and overworked black people that are problaby being paid too little anyways. They like to take you on "outings" and then buy lots of to-go things for themselves to take home with the same money that buys things for the patients. It's a very pretty facility and they will tell you things during admission that end up not being true, for example: that treatment is individual based. It's a real shame for such a potentially very beneficial program. Kudos to the staff Stacey and Libba, they are a ray of sunshine after sitting through all the other staff and classes. It's sad to see there are no positive reviews on the web of this facility, but it's the truth.
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