A Company with an Important Mission Hampered by Poor Decisions
Pros
This is one of the first companies I have worked for that genuinely seeks to promote from within rather than conduct searches outside the company for management. There are a good number of people in middle management who have worked their way up from the ground floor. Current employees are given priority in interviewing and consideration for posted job. BAMSI practices what it preaches here. There are many compassionate, dedicated and incredibly hard working people amongst the lower ranks at BAMSI. Salaries are, mostly, in line with the rest of the companies in this industry.
Cons
Too many of the hard working employees mentioned above leave for a variety of reasons, mostly traced back to upper management decisions and actions/inactions, and thus turnover rate is very high. Too many employee awards are handed out to various company HQ employees rather than to the anonymous workers in the programs who are doing fantastic, but unseen by upper management, things every single day for low pay and under tough conditions. Many, many short-sighted decsions are made to take away resources away from the program in attempts to save money in the short term while programs, and their reputations, suffer for it in the long run. This leads to an overall lack of resources that make it incredibly difficult to carry out the program's job and the company's mission. The decisions made to slash program budgets and cut personnel are made in meetings behind closed doors and the managers of the affected programs are not allowed to attend or even give input to plead their cases against further cuts. Upper management only gives lip service to the issue of employee morale. And one gets the sense it's only to cut down on how costly employee turnover is, not to genuinely deal with making employees feel valued and appreciated. It's left up to each program manager to try and do something nice for their staff and at their own expense (BAMSI stopped the practice of allowing petty cash to pay for morale builders like a program staff lunch once a month, etc). Overall, in my time there I have seen the company's culture start to shift from that of a Human Services organization to more of a bottom line, numbers driven corporate culture.
